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Thursday, July 10, 2008

Moriarty's Heritage Arena Hosts Semipros

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      The 2008 Moriarty Fourth of July Rodeo was a professional show.
    From the not so obvious — the restrooms were spotless, the cleanest they've been in many a moon — to the trick riders and the overall field, the annual event was a far cry from its previous status as a junior rodeo. The semipro competition, held Friday and Saturday at Moriarty's Heritage Arena, was sanctioned by the New Mexico Rodeo Association and was run by 777 Rodeo Company, a rodeo producing business out of Texline, Texas.
    “It was great,” said Matthew Tanner, the rodeo's 20-year-old bullfighter/rodeo clown. “It's amazing how much they did to put on this rodeo.”
    Tanner, a 6-foot-1, 250-pound former Moriarty High football lineman, protected the riders and entertained the crowd with a mobile microphone. He lives on his family's farm about five miles south of Moriarty.
    “I've been doing this about five, six years now,” Tanner said. “I love it. I'm going to do it the rest of my life.”
    Bullrider Curtis Jessee liked the rodeo, too. First off, the 50-year-old from Eastland, Texas, is happy he can still compete at his age, and secondly, he was the only rider to stay on the required 8 seconds, thus earning himself a winning purse of $1,162.40.
    Astride a big, black, white-faced animal, Jessee lost his hat early to expose a slightly balding noggin. But he held on and scored 77 points for the victory on Saturday.
    “I've been doing it a lot of years,” Jessee said. “It does hurt. I got stomped on in Cimarron a while back, but I won in the process. Travis Briscoe (the Professional Bull Rider from Edgewood), he and I split in Cimarron. In October when I turn 51, it'll be 36 years I've competed.”
    Alex Santillanes, 15, entered the bullriding competition on Friday.
    “I stayed on him about 3 or 4 seconds,” said Santillanes, who is moving from Los Lunas and will be a sophomore at Moriarty High this fall. “I'm going to be in the Moriarty (and Estancia High School) Rodeo Club.”
    Cody Strite, a 14-year-old Moriarty freshman-to-be, was on hand as a fan. He proudly wore the buckle he said he won at the New Mexico Wrangler Junior High Rodeo finals in Lovington in May.
    “This year, we're going to have a good high school rodeo club,” said Don Martinez, the club's adult leader, who was a member of the Fourth of July support staff.
    Jessee admitted this past weekend's rodeo wasn't the biggest he had ever seen, as far as the number of entrants or fans in the stands.
    “But I think it was great,” he said. “It'll get better as more people get to know about it. I think the way the economy is, it keeps folks from traveling up and down the road. But I think as it goes along, it'll come around.”
    There were some in the crowd, and even some of the helpers, that expressed some dismay that the holiday event had discarded its junior format.
    “I think some people got the wrong impression that we weren't going to have a junior rodeo,” said Bill Howard, the first-year president of the city-designated Moriarty Heritage Rodeo Arena Committee. “We want to have a junior rodeo. We're working on it. I love junior rodeo. That's how I got started.”
    The “committee” was formerly called the Moriarty Heritage Rodeo Association. Howard said the new organization hasn't yet decided on a formal name.
    The goal is to get as many events possible scheduled for Heritage Arena, Howard said.
    “I think it turned out great,” he said. “The livestock was excellent, and I think it was a professionally run rodeo.”
    But Howard acknowledged the committee might not have broke even with its inaugural effort.
    “I don't think we did,” he said Saturday evening. “We had a lot more people on the first day. I was told by (the rodeo producers) that it was about average for an NMRA rodeo of this type for its first time. I think it'll be better the next time. We're going to stick with it.”
    There was about 375 tickets sold over two days, Howard said.
   

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