Missouri teens bank $100,000 in Hooey Jr. BFI 10.5

 A whopping 468 teams of roping’s up-and-coming ranks converged on Guthrie March 28 for the Hooey Jr. BFI 10.5, with a pair of best friends from Missouri earning the six-figure prize. John Cole Van Loan, 17, and Paden Evans, 19, are both straight 5s who live together in Purdy where they help Clay Brown make calf horses – riding seven or eight a day – and rope their dummy every night. 

“This won’t wear out for a while,” said Evans, from Princeton. “John Cole’s dad was so nervous he couldn’t even video our run.”

Thanks to a fierce Oklahoma rainstorm, the kids roped in one arena, making it nearly the same setup as the real BFI – a 12-hour day chasing hard-running steers behind a long head start and rope barrier. From second callback, Van Loan and Evans needed a 9.2 to take over the lead, and with a decent steer they went 7.99. Then, the high callback team from New Mexico roped a leg and fell to ninth.

“I just wanted to go make my run and try to be leading the roping whenever we walked out the back of the arena,” said Van Loan, who was aboard Dexter, his fast 19-year-old grey gelding. “In Missouri at a lot of our jackpots, they have cattle strapped out there like that, and the rodeos are all like that, too.”

The top 10 callbacks were represented by kids from nearly 10 different states. The reserve championship went to Arizona’s Cole Hubbell and Gabriel Ortega Jr., who split $66,000. Hubbell also placed in the fifth rotation with Karson Frost for $1,000 per man.

And one kid from Fallon, Nevada, clocked the only two sub-6-second runs of the roping. Stix Lee and Pete Mori put up the fastest time all day when they faced on a 5.70 to win the top-35 short round and jump to eighth in the average, earning $8,200 total. Just before that, Lee had also won the final rotation with Wyatt Peek on a run of 5.74 to split $3,000.

While Van Loan had been to big jackpots and amateur rodeos, and Evans had won ropings heading at the USTRC Finals and won a reserve NHSFR championship in tie-down roping, the two had never backed into a box with $100,000 on the line.

“Before the short round started, I was pretty nervous,” admitted Van Loan, who grew up in Bois D’Arc and whose parents work at a faith-based humanitarian organization in Springfield. “Me and Paden and a couple of our other buddies in the top five stayed down at the back of the arena messing around and playing Left Leg for about the first 10 teams. But once I got in the box, I was pretty cool. I’d done the hard part, now it was just… catch one more.”

Evans said he kept telling himself the same thing, and they could just do what they’d done all winter long.

“John Cole gives me the same look every time, so I could rope every steer on the second hop,” Evans said. “His grey horse is really good, but kind of crazy. When we were 10 teams away, I’d ask him if we ought to ease off down in there. He’d say, ‘No, not yet.’ That horse gets really nervous standing behind the boxes, so he’d wait to ride down the moat until he was a few teams out.”

After picking up their fat checks and saddles, buckles, backpacks, hats, boots and more, they jumped in the truck to head back to Missouri, getting home about 2:30 a.m. The next day, Van Loan still couldn’t really fathom that he had won $50,000. As for Evans, he’d lost his rope and missed for both other partners in the first round, so Van Loan had been his only chance.

“Our second steer made me nervous,” he said. “John Cole got him around the neck and I caught him, but my slack went up over my horse’s ears. I almost missed my dally.”

Evans was a calf roper and then mostly just a header all through high school and amateur rodeos. But last summer, Jeremy Michaelis built an indoor arena about 20 minutes away, so Evans went to work for him – and his heeling is all there, now. In Guthrie, he was aboard Dunny, his good head horse that scores and is honest from the other end, too.

“I’ve got some goats at my house and I would rope them every night – that’s honestly what helped me the most,” Evans said. “I’d go over to Jeremy’s every day and then come home under the lights and rope my goats all night.”