Team-Roping In Mesquite

Moapa Valley Progress

The World Series of Team-Roping came to Mesquite over the weekend of January 26-27, bringing together several hundred of the best team-ropers in the region. Among the ropers were Moapa Valley’s own Troy Shiozawa and from Morgan, Utah, Jeff Wadman. Both men are familiar to southern Nevada rodeo fans.

Troy Shiozawa and his brother Matthew are well-known on the rodeo circuit. Matt Shiozawa has competed in the National Finals Rodeo. Troy, a local business and church leader, also stays active in the sport.

Jeff Wadman and his wife Emily are familiar faces to anyone who has seen the most recent version of “Meet the Mormons,” a set of short films recently released by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeff is “The Horseman” featured in one of those film shorts shown regularly at the St. George Temple Visitors Center.

Wadman is more than just an excellent horse trainer however. He truly qualifies as a “horse-whisperer” whose ability to effectively communicate with and train horses is remarkable according to those who know the business. His unusually successful training methods has gained him recognition well beyond his native Utah mountains.

Wadman sees training horses as being much like training people. To further extend his skills Wadman has decided to develop an executive retreat program in which business and community leaders can learn and practice skills that can be applied to business or civic circumstances on horseback in a beautiful mountain setting. Wadman teachs these skills while each businessman and community leader is sitting astride his own horse.

The learner develops methods and concepts that Wadman believes, apply equally well in training and motivating people as in training horses.
“Horses are much more like people than we often realize,” Wadman said. “If you can learn to train a horse, you can use the same concepts to motivate people.”
Wadman’s “Retreat on Horseback” takes place in the mountains above Park City, Utah during week-end man-to-horse interactions.

During a brief Mesquite interview with Wadman he was asked what he believes brings success to team-roping.

With typical dry humor and homespun cowboy wisdom he responded, “Some cowboys are superstitious about what color shirt they wear, or they carry some trinket to bring them luck.”

But when it comes to team-roping those things don’t count for much, Wadman said. He explained simply that there are five brains running down that arena: two cowboys, two horses and one steer.
“The cowboy has to calculate as best he can where each of those brains wants to go,”

Wadman said. “It doesn’t much help to add superstition to the mix.”
From a spectator point of view, it was a pleasure, on a beautiful southern Nevada winter day, to watch those two men and many other cowboys, as they applied their skills against the clock in roping the head and heels of young steers while their wives and young families looked on with pride.