So You Wanna Be a Big-time Steer Wrestler

BULLDOGGING SCHOOL

“I'm not ridin' your rear ends to mean anything personal by it, but I been playin' around here for near two days, and now I gotta get tough with you boys. You paid me for this, and, damn it, I'm gonna do it.” This is a pep talk bellowed by a 6-foot-2, 235-pound, barrel-chested Wyoming cowboy who's standing in the middle of the huge practice rodeo arena at Beartooth Cattle Company Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona. He's R.G. Kekich, and the six men in his audience are hanging their heads, kicking at the dirt with their cowboy boots, taking it like men.

'I put you on a horse now, and you're gonna get yourself killed.' "You think I'm gonna put any one of you guys on a horse, the way you're doing now?", he asks, without expecting an answer.

Kekich, who looks like a cowboy's version of actor Gene Hackman, eyes each man. "I put you on a horse now, and you're gonna get yourself killed. Well, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna send you home to your mamas crippled. So you get your rear ends out there and learn this!"

If there was ever a real reason why mamas wouldn't want their babies to grow up to be cowboys, it's right here: the Beartooth Steer Wrestling School, a few miles east of Phoenix. Pay your $300, grit your teeth, swallow your fear, ignore the pain, and spend four days learning how to down a 600-pound steer.

It's morning in mid-November and cold outside in a pure and stinging way that's unique to the arid rural lands of central Arizona.

This is the second day of the first official steer-wrestling class at Beartooth, and the students, ranging from 17 to 32 years old, are a mix of men and boys that includes an accountant, a rodeo clown, an auctioneer, and a professional bull rider. They have this burning thing in common: they want to be able to jump off a horse, grab a steer by its thrashing horns, and throw that steer down to the ground. And they want to do it fast in seconds.

They want to win money at it in professional rodeos throughout the Southwest. Their four-day class will conclude with a jackpot contest. The student who wins - the student who can wrestle the steer in the fastest time gets a ruby-studded silver and gold belt buckle proclaiming him the "Beartooth Cattle Company Steer Wrestling Champion."

Beartooth Cattle Company is owned by Timm Rosenbach, a National Football League pro and quarterback with the Phoenix Cardinals. His partner in the ranching venture is Kekich, who convinced Rosenbach to establish the steer-wrestling school as a profitable side operation. It's something Kekich knows, and Rosenbach dearly wants to learn once his NFL career is behind him.

In 1976 Kekich was a National Rodeo Championship steer-wrestling finalist. In 1984 he was the champion steer wrestler in the Arizona/New Mexico Turquoise Rodeo Circuit. To this day, he holds the record for downing a steer in the Cheyenne, Wyoming, "Daddy of Them All" Frontier Days Rodeo. He tackled the steer in 6.8 seconds after the animal got a 30-foot head start out of the chute.

Kekich's assistant instructor at Beartooth is Mark Waltz of Coolidge, himself ranked among the world's top 20 steer wrestlers.

After leading students in stretching exercises and sending them out for a mile run around the arena, Kekich and Waltzdrive the "steer saver" into the ring. It's a large contraption that resembles a steer. It has huge fiberglass horns, a steer-size body covered with sheep's wool, and it's attached to a two-wheel trailer. The trailer is hitched to a tractor.

Beartooth Cattle Company is owned by Timm Rosenbach, a National Football League pro and quarterback with the Phoenix Cardinals. His partner in the ranching venture is Kekich, who convinced Rosenbach to establish the steerwrestling school as a profitable side operation. It's something Kekich knows, and Rosenbach dearly wants to learn once his NFL career is behind him.

"Okay, get out there and line up!" Kekich commands. The half dozen stu-dents stand in a row. Waltz starts the tractor, and, as he passes them, each student grabs the "steer" by the horns and slides along with it. During this phase, students are trying to perfect the "arc" the most vital element of the art. The wrestler crooks the steer's horns, plants his feet, and slides, his trail becoming an arc as he pulls the steer's head toward his torso.

Kekich yells at Waltz to speed up the tractor, and the men go at it again. Kekich watches, bellowing out instructions as each man struggles with the steer-saver horns and the concept of the arc slide.

"They used to call this bulldoggin'," Kekich says as he makes mental notes About the students' progress. "You wanna know how this got to be a rodeo event?" He turns, grinning, and tells this story: "There was this ol' cowboy, Bill Pickett. He was a black cowboy in Texas during the 1920s. He was out on the trail, and one of his bulls took off into the bushes.

"Now what normally happened is a dog would follow the bull, bite it on the nose, and bring it on back. That's where the term 'bulldogging' came from.

BULLDOGGING SCHOOL

"Anyways, for one reason or another, ol' Pickett was out there without a dog. So he rides into the bushes after the bull, jumps off his horse, grabs the darn bull by the horns, and bites the bull on the nose. Next thing, Pickett comes out of the bushes leading the bull."

The six greenhorns around Kekich think their legs are being pulled, but Kekich stands by his story. "It's how the whole idea of steer wrestling got started," he insists.

Quarterback Timm Rosenbach chuckles. He's leaning over the arena railing intently watching the students, halfway listening to the conversation around him. Someone asks him why he's not out there wrestling a steer.

"Can't," he says. "Not while I'm playing football. But, when I'm done, I'll be the first one out there."

Now it's time for the second phase of the day's instruction. It looks like the worst, and, judg-

ing from the scraping

and bruising the students endure, it surely is just that.

The steers, real ones, this time, are herded up from a pen at the rear of the stadium and corralled into a chute. One of the animals is guided into a small holding area. Ty Coulter, a 17-year-old student from Gilbert, climbs into the pen with it. He crooks the struggling steer's jabbing horns into his elbows and waits.

The pen opens, and the steer bolts out with Coulter running beside it, trying to keep the horns in a crook hold.

"Damn it, quit that pitter-pattering with the feet!" Kekich roars. "SLIDE! SLIDE and make the arc!" Kekich turns to the other students.

"You can't run along with it because you'll get your legs all tangled up. Slide... don't run with him. Plant your feet and slide."

David Brunson of Goodyear is next. He's out the gate with the steer, slides, and struggles with it, but he can't bring it down and off all four feet. In the world of rodeo, if you haven't wrestled the steer so that he's off all four feet, you haven't wrestled him at all.

You can't run along with it because you'll get your legs all tangled up. Slide . . .'

"Now, David," Kekich says as Brunson returns to the pen area, "what do you think you did wrong out there?"

"I didn't hold him close enough to me," Brunson answers. "When I grabbed him, I just lost the horns."

Jay Bricker, a 19-year-old from Chandler, is next. Close at the steer's side and behind its head, Bricker crooks the steer by the horns and takes off in a run. He begins the slide, making the arc trail as he yanks the steer's head back toward him and upward across his torso to his left shoulder. Then Bricker twists the steer's head, and it's down, wildly kicking out its four feet.

"I hate that hittin' the ground part," Bricker says, shaking his head and rubbing his ribs. It's no wonder he hates it. The young cowboy took a horn in his side the previous day, and cartilage was ripped from his ribs. Today his entire torso is wrapped in Ace bandages. The students work at this for a couple of hours.

Then Kekich and Waltz tell them to gather around a television monitor near the pen area. Waltz's wife, Leanne, has been videotaping the students so they can see their mistakes and triumphs.

"Okay, now," Kekich tells them after they watch the videotape. "This is a four-day class, and you only got two days left. The prerequisite to this is you have to be aggressive; you have to be physical. You got to take command of the situation. Take that steer's head and be aggressive. If you're not going to do this, you might just as well go on home. If you're not a physical person, you should go on home right now."

He shows them the gleaming, glinting buckle that one of them will win.

"You can win this," he says. "How do you do it? I'll tell you how. You come out and slow your mind. You say to yourself, 'Make that arc, make that arc.' Without that arc, you're going to be on your butt. So do it! Let's get out there and do some bulldoggin'!"

Horses and the steer saver are the key elements in the next phase of the day's instruction. Waltz demonstrates how to head off on a galloping horse toward the moving steer saver, lean away from the horse, grab the saver's horns, edge out of the horse's saddle, and, crooking the horns in the elbows, run and slide into the arc.

One by one, the students try it. They come up to the side and behind the head of the fake steer, lean away from the

WHEN YOU GO.

If you have a hankering to wrestle a steer, contact R.G. Kekich at Beartooth Steer Wrestling School, 13902 E. Morgan Drive, Gilbert, AZ 85324; telephone, (602) 899-4456. The cost of the scheduled four-day class is $300 without a horse; it's $250 if you have your own. Private tutoring also is available.

Of course and down to the prop's head. They drop their reins and grab hold of the prop's head, simultaneously pulling themselves out of the saddle and hitting the ground. They slide and yank the horns back, pretending they're wrestling a real steer to the ground.

They look good, and Kekich tells them so. They're getting it. They're planting their feet instead of "pitter-pattering" alongside the steer saver, and they're taking command.

Now it's time to watch the real thing. Kekich, 55, has entered the steer-wrestling event in the November Gilbert Days professional rodeo. What he's been telling them how to do, he's about to show them. The students, rubbing their aches and pains but still smiling, help load the horses and head off to watch their master at work.

EPILOGUE

And master he was. Kekich won second-place in the rodeo's steer-wrestling event, downing his four-legged foe in 5.2 seconds and winning $800. The first-place winning time was five seconds.

And who won the Beartooth Steer Wrestling School championship buckle? Coulter, the 17 year old from Gilbert. Coulter, who probably had the most trouble mastering the arc, ultimately got it down pat. Later he competed in a junior steer-wrestling match in Florence, and he won the event. At press time Rosenbach had announced his NFL retirement, although his agent said he would play again this year, and the Cardinals were uncertain about the quarterback's status.