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Founder of the Ranch Sorting National Championships, Dave Wolfe
187 Plays2 years ago
Tune in to hear former Colorado State University professor Dave Wolfe’s story of founding two Western organizations in the industry. He founded the United States Team Penning Championships in the 1990s and also prides himself in founding the Ranch Sorting National Championships happening June 10-17, 2023, at the Will Rogers Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas. A cowboy at heart with a passion for all horse events the ag lifestyle, rodeo, and more. For a full episode transcript, visit our website at www.justinboots.com/kick-your-boots-up.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Kick Your Boots Up'
00:00:03
Speaker
You're listening to the Kick Your Boots Up podcast, where we swap stories of the West. Whether you're just waking up or getting in for the day, come on in and kick your boots up.
Meet Dave Wolf: Innovator and Founder
00:00:12
Speaker
Today's guest on the Kick Your Boots Up podcast is an innovator of his own. He has gone the extra mile for the industry, has started a few organizations, and today we're going to talk all about it. The founder of the National Team Pinning Championship in the 1990s,
00:00:27
Speaker
He was the former American Quarter Horse Association and Pain Association Palomino Association judge. So he's judged for all the associations. He's a former professor and coach at Colorado State University. And we all proudly know him today as the founder and president of the Cinch Ranch Shorting National Championships, Mr. Dave Wolf.
Dave's Journey in the Horse Industry
00:00:50
Speaker
Dave, it's so good to have you on the podcast here today.
00:00:53
Speaker
Well, Taylor, thanks for having me. I really enjoy these kinds of things. Uh, it's a great way, uh, to promote the sport and get the word out. So thanks for having me on. Oh, of course. And speaking of promoting the sport, we've got to tell everyone all about the national ranch sorting championships. But before we do, I want to back it up just a little bit and get to know more about you and how you got started in the industry. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you all got started where you are today.
00:01:19
Speaker
Well, you know, I grew up in the horse industry from the youth. I started out in 4-H. I went to college, Lamar Community College, couple of years in the horse training and management program.
00:01:30
Speaker
and then transferred to Colorado State University to finish out a bachelor degree there in equine science. Got very involved with judging at the collegiate level, judged on the collegiate teams, and then pursued the judging career with American Quarter Wars Association, Pain Association, and Palomino Association. It was a wonderful experience. For 24 years, I got to travel all across the United States and around the world.
00:01:58
Speaker
Judging horse shows and meeting people in the horse industry and seeing some awesome athletes and horses in the horse industry. I enjoyed it tremendously.
00:02:09
Speaker
Oh, and I'm sure that you've gone the extra mile along the way. I've got to kind of back up a little bit to the collegiate judging. My cousin was fortunate enough to be a collegiate judger and it's just given him so many opportunities in the horse industry. So what was it like for you kind of getting to do that? What you knowing that it was a gateway going into be a professional judge on down the line. What was that like? It was, it was special and you know, it takes a lot of dedication and a lot of hard work.
00:02:35
Speaker
And nobody really realizes how hard it is to go through that collegiate level and all those practices and given all those reasons and throughout the career at college. But it was a special treat. We got to go to the, you know, the World Championship shows and compete against all of the other colleges across the country.
00:02:57
Speaker
And I really felt it was sort of beckoning me to pursue that part of the industry. And right after college, I went to work for Colorado State University in the equine science program. And then, of course, you have to be 25 before you can apply for a judge's
Founding National Associations
00:03:18
Speaker
application. And I got it right after that. And what a special deal. It was really awesome.
00:03:24
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure. And we were just talking off camera, the places you've gotten to go and the many, many, many miles you've been across the United States judging. I'm sure you put in a lot of hard work too, but I'm curious to know when you were going to school and getting your degree, was your end goal being a judge and a professor? And did you even think dream up of founding these organizations or were you trying to do something else? It sounds like maybe you were going to be a vet or somewhere along there. What were your thoughts?
00:03:49
Speaker
Well, certainly my first goal or my first thought when growing up in youth was to become a veterinarian. And I went to Oklahoma State University for a year and to pursue that. And actually my advisor at Oklahoma State University, you know, just flat asked me, what, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I love riding training horses, but I don't know that I can make a living doing that. I thought veterinary science was the best. He said, you know, there's a,
00:04:17
Speaker
There's a horse training management school, and that was way back in the early 80s when they were just getting started about training horses. And so I went to Lamar and then transferred on to Colorado State University. But my instructor at Lamar, there were 54 kids in the class that I was in. And he said, you know, probably five of you
00:04:42
Speaker
will end up making a career in the horse industry." And he said, it's all about finding a niche, what works, what fits, and something that you can dedicate yourself to and be successful. So I remember that from that day on trying to think, what will my niche be?
00:04:59
Speaker
and it started out with judging. Judging was a great niche and a great opportunity for me to travel and make a living in the horse industry and it opened my eyes to all aspects of the horse industry. Obviously with judging a quarter horse show you judge everything top to bottom English to western to cattle and raining all of it and so it's a great opportunity to learn a lot
00:05:23
Speaker
get to know a whole lot about the horse industry and pursue the idea of what I wanted to do. That's so well said. One of the reasons why I would consider you an innovator is the fact that you took an industry that traditionally is harder to make money at. You learned making a living would be hard on your body if you were a horse trainer, things like that. You decided to originally found an organization, the Team Pinning Association.
00:05:51
Speaker
But now, of course, fast forward to here we are today. You've made the national ranch sorting what it is today. Yeah, the ranch sorting national championships, what it
Challenges and Vision in Team Pinning
00:06:00
Speaker
is today. So what was it like going through those growing pains whenever you were trying to get things figured out? I mean, for both organizations, I'm sure there was so many hurdles. You mentioned you learned about judging cattle, judging what that was like. And then now that you bring the cattle into the sport, that had to have been hard too. So tell us all about that and all the growing pains that you had getting those two organizations established.
00:06:21
Speaker
You know, from the outside looking in, it seems so easy. But from the inside, it was a struggle. Without question, there's tons of hurdles that you have to jump. Obviously, breaking into an industry, into the equine industry with a new sport, starting an association at a national level, takes a lot of planning, a lot of dedication.
00:06:47
Speaker
And commitment with without question and you get the naysayers, it won't work it isn't going to happen you can't make it you'll never get big.
00:07:00
Speaker
You go through all of that. And of course, the financial struggle of getting it started takes a lot of advertising, a lot of promotion to get the word out on a national level. And I did that with the national team penny championships. And basically all of that derived from getting a family. I now have three boys that are all grown up, 30 to 22, I guess.
00:07:30
Speaker
But they were young boys and we wanted to pursue the horse industry for them. And in my experience and all of the judging and everything, what I always leaned towards was the fun side of it, not the serious competitive side of it, which is so rewarding for so many people.
00:07:50
Speaker
But I wanted my boys to have fun. And whether they want or not, it was going to be fun. And when we looked at it, we looked at the sort of the rodeo industry and the roping, the team roping and that kind of thing. And obviously, that's a lot of fun. But we also found that this sport of team pinning was a real fun project.
00:08:19
Speaker
I wanted to focus on fun for the family. And we looked at different sports. Somebody came along and said, you know, you ought to try this team pinning. There was a team pinning down the road, a practice, and we went to the practice, had fun. Somebody suggested that you ought to try producing a pinning or some practices. We had an arena and we were producing ropings at the time. So we tried it and my gosh, people came out of the woodwork and it got bigger and bigger. And every year we got more cattle and, and it began to, began to grow.
00:08:50
Speaker
And we decided we wanted to put on a team painting at Cheyenne frontier days we live just 35 miles from Cheyenne and. We thought it would be a great opportunity to promote that fun sport, and so I made some connections at Cheyenne and I actually got in at the Laramie county Community College in Cheyenne.
Transition to Ranch Sorting
00:09:10
Speaker
and said we could have the pinning there. And I convinced the folks at Cheyenne Frontier Day Park that on final Sunday, we could do a top 10 team pinning on the race track right in front of the arena at Cheyenne Frontier Day Park during Cheyenne Frontier Days. It was a great opportunity. And I could not believe it that year that we had 1200 teams
00:09:36
Speaker
the first year of any big production that we had ever done. And we were so excited about it. From there, we decided to start a team pinning association called National Team Pinning Championships. And we spread it across the United States. We became a sanctioning body. We wrote a set of rules, motored all across the United States. And it grew and it became a very successful organization.
00:10:02
Speaker
Oh yes, without a doubt. And to have that big, huge start at Cheyenne, the daddy of them all, what an iconic story there. And so I'm curious, naturally you wanted to move to another organization, create a more opportunity and maybe a sport where people didn't have to grow up in the industry to learn the sport and have appreciation for the sport. And so that's probably how the Ranch Sorting National Championship came about. What was the Ranch Sorting aspect? Talk us through there, how you branched off from the Team Pinning Association.
00:10:32
Speaker
During the team pinning, we tried to grow it at a national level, and it became very successful, the largest team pinning association in the United States. But we seemed to run into barriers, and we got to about 5,000 members. And after that, we didn't continue to grow to get new members like we had hoped. And so we sort of sat back and looked at it and said, what are the barriers? And the barriers seemed to be
00:11:01
Speaker
that the cattlemen were concerned about running the cattle up and down the arena. Obviously, it became harder to get cattle for those kind of events. That was a concern. Number two, the majority of the folks in it, as they got started, were novice riders on cattle that they hadn't experienced working cattle before.
00:11:28
Speaker
And so it gets out of control. A full arena, 250 by 300 foot arena with two or three riders in there and 30 head of cattle. It takes some talent. It takes some success. It takes some cattlemen to be able to manage those cattle in a successful way. And the horsemen sort of looked at it like, are these novice riders just riding on cattle? And so that became a barrier that
00:11:57
Speaker
You know, the equine industry was, was sort of bumping up against on the sport of team pinning. Now I love team pinning and there's a lot of folks out there that love team pinning. And as you become experienced in it, it's a wonderful game, but the break-in part is sort of tough. And so we looked at it and said, well, let's, let's control the game a little bit more, confine it, uh, into a round pan and we're just going to sort cattle.
00:12:27
Speaker
Instead of taking them down the arena and putting them in a pen, we're just going to learn to sort cattle. And so we set up two round pens and we put a 12 foot opening between them. We put 10 out of cattle on one side and two riders and you just went in and sorted cattle out in numerical order. And we started that alongside of our team pinning association.
00:12:47
Speaker
And we called it Ranch Sorting and it began to grow. It began to get bigger and more interest in it. And the new riders in the sport loved it because if they'd missed a cow, all they had to do was turn around and they were right back in action on that cow. He didn't run down the arena on him. So very, very exciting and it began
Growth and Impact of Ranch Sorting
00:13:09
Speaker
to grow. So I founded Ranch Sorting National Championships alongside of NTPC, National Team Meeting Championships.
00:13:17
Speaker
I was the founder of both. I was the president of both. I had investors in both. And the ranch sorting got bigger and bigger. At one point, it was sort of became a conflict of interest for me to run both associations and obviously didn't have the time to do it all. And so I sold my share in National Team Pity Championships.
00:13:42
Speaker
and took over the share that the shareholders had in RS&C and went forward with the Ranch sorting national championships. And from there on, my gosh, the sport is exploding.
00:13:57
Speaker
Oh, without a doubt. And it's so cool for me to sit here and hear this story. So I hope everyone out there listening is taking it all in to, to hear from the horse's mouth, exactly what happened. Um, that's just so, so incredible. And so I'm curious, I know that you're always thinking about, um, bettering the sport, bettering the future, bettering the future generations, even. So I'm curious to ask you, what do you think, or where do you see the future of the sport growing?
00:14:25
Speaker
You know, truthfully, we're just beginning. This sport is such a perfect opportunity for so many people to get involved in the Western industry, especially the Western industry on cattle, because it is a confined area. And we even have a Western heritage class where you don't get out of a truck. You do the whole class, your whole run at a truck.
00:14:50
Speaker
a walker of tribe. And so, so many people can get involved in the sport. You don't have to go and take a ton of lessons. You don't have to have a special horse.
00:15:00
Speaker
control your horse you can ranch sort at the beginning of novice levels and be very successful and we have a number grading system from one to a nine and the number one is grandma on a trail horse truthfully that's what we tell people if you're if you're not grandma on a trail horse you're beyond the number one spot we want
00:15:22
Speaker
everybody to get involved in our sport at a basic level. And we saved that spot. When you win three checks in our sport, you graduate to a number two rookie. And when you win $1,000, you graduate to a number three novice. So lots of opportunity at the introductory level for this sport like no other cow horse sport there is. And that's why this sport is going to get tremendously large.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yes, that is so awesome that you operate offer those opportunities, a lot of the biggest misconceptions with the horse industry is that you have to start with the background start with the knowledge start with the money start with the expensive horses. So I love everything that you guys are doing to allow anyone to come in.
00:16:06
Speaker
learn to love the sport and respect the horses and learn the correct way. And then even have the incentive of being able to grow and that can become better and get better and better and better. And who knows, there's probably some pros out there that started as novices,
Ranch Sorting National Championships
00:16:20
Speaker
you know, that, um, just got bit by the bug and loved it.
00:16:25
Speaker
Absolutely. Actually, our office manager Tanner Sperl, right here in our office, I gave him his first clinic in Evergreen, Colorado. Oh, six years ago. And this guy, he couldn't hardly turn around. He had a great big old trail horse that was 15.3 and couldn't get it done. And I get I remember to this day, that first lesson I gave him
00:16:49
Speaker
And he said, I love this game. I got to get better. And he has progressed. He came to work for us. He's now won over $100,000 in the sport and is one of our top riders in the industry. And it's so exciting to watch people mature from the beginning level all the way to the professional level in our sport. It's a lot of fun to watch that.
00:17:09
Speaker
That gives me so much hope for the future, so everything that you have going is so good and what an incredible story I know there's several stories out there like that so. Well done on your guys's end but we've got to get to the excitement this week is the biggest week of the year for you guys. June 10 through the 17th is going to be all things ranch sorting national championship tell us about what we can expect what's going on where it's at tell us all the details.
00:17:34
Speaker
What a wonderful experience it will be. If you get a chance to come, whether you're a competitor or not, obviously there's no ticket sales or anything like that. You can come to the John Justin Arena in beautiful Fort Worth and Will Rogers Memorial Center, one of the epic places for horse events. And we are there for eight days straight. Ranch sorting is all we do.
00:17:59
Speaker
And we have a lot of fun and we have a maturity for our three and four year old horses. We have a pro rider class for our upper lever riders. And then we have a whole array of other classes for all different levels of contestants, even the brand new beginner that's never won three checks in the sport.
00:18:18
Speaker
and is a very green novice rider, never worked on cattle. We have a class for them at our world finals. In fact, that class will have over 400 teams in it. It's amazing, brand new people coming every year to our sport. But we have seven different sorting pins running into the two main arenas there at Will Rogers Memorial
00:18:43
Speaker
for seven days and it's exciting it's it's it's unbelievable to see you know you call it a three-ring circus we call it a seven-ring circus people going from one ring to the other and one class to the other all week long we have a great organization we have over 100 people on staff for that event and we have a potluck dinner
00:19:07
Speaker
We have we have a horse sale there horseman's choice has a horse sale there for cow horses and ranch sorting horses and it's just a wonderful time and it's it's a party for the sport of ranch sorting. Without a doubt, I know i'm looking forward to going to check it out anyone out there who's interested feel free to follow along i'm sure you guys have social media right.
00:19:31
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. We have a lot of great connections, but you know what's amazing to most people is the numbers that we pull from that world finals. Last year we had over 8700 teams.
00:19:44
Speaker
stayed out close to a million dollars. And man, the growth of this sport, people coming from California to Florida to all over for that event. We could top 9,000 teams this year. My goal is 10,000 teams. Obviously, just to say we did it.
00:20:03
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's a really good goal. And it brings me to a really good question. I love what you said earlier, all the different options. Do the members have to qualify for the national championships or this is a clean slate kind of championship? A new member of a beginner does not have to qualify, but all other members have to have competed in five sanctioned events sometime during the year across the United States. We have about 450 sanctioned events across the United States each year.
Closing and Social Media Engagement
00:20:30
Speaker
Wow okay so see lots of opportunity to get involved anyone out there who's a horse hobbyist. Maybe has a trail riding horse that wants to get started and see if their horses even cow at all, I feel like this would be the best and perfect most perfect opportunity so well done for what you guys have going on over there Dave congratulations on all of it, I feel like i'm in.
00:20:50
Speaker
conversation with a legend here. You're paving the way in the industry and making opportunity for people out there. So thank you for everything you do. If you guys are curious to follow along with the schedule, maybe you can't make it to the championships, but you want to get the chance to go to another event throughout the year.
00:21:05
Speaker
You can go to www.rsnc.us and figure out their schedules, everything they have going on. Of course, follow along on social media. This will be a huge event to look forward to. Dave, thank you for your time and thank you for everything that you've done for all the organizations, but especially the Ranch Sorting National Championship. Well, Taylor, thanks for having us on. I really appreciate it.
00:21:28
Speaker
Thanks for joining us on Kick Your Boots Up. I'm your host, Taylor McAdams, and we can't wait to share the next story of the West. Until then, feel free to like, subscribe, and leave us a review. Follow us on social media at Justin Boots to keep up with our next episode, and we'll see you the next time you kick your boots up.