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Opinion by Greg Hansen : Marana cowboys are always on the go

Opinion by Greg Hansen
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 12.28.2007
The off-season for a rodeo cowboy is a two-part blur: Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas breakfast.
On Wednesday, Colter Todd and Cesar de la Cruz were back on the road, at the Lasso Del Sol, a U.S. Team Roping Championship event in Scottsdale. Over the next few weeks, they'll ride and rope in Texas and Colorado.
After that? "It's a wreck,'' Todd says with a laugh. "It's nuts.''
"The boys were home for Thanksgiving,'' says de la Cruz's mother, Zenaida Olivar. And then she puts the telephone aside to ask her husband, Larry, a question.
"Were the boys home for Thanksgiving this year? Or were they ropin' in Laughlin?"
About all Zenaida Olivar remembers with certainty is that she was at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas earlier this month, and that "the boys'' combined to earn more than $180,000. They were seven seconds shy — one header and one heeler — of winning the world championship.
Instead, de la Cruz finished second in the world among heelers and Todd No. 3 among headers, and both had the year of their young lives.
"I see Cesar three or four times a year,'' his mother says. The rest of the time, de la Cruz and Todd will phone their families from a rodeo in Pecos, Texas, or on the road to a rodeo in Red Lodge, Mont., or maybe Cody, Wyo.
So perhaps the Willie Nelson song is correct: "Mama don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. … they'll never stay home and they're always alone.''
The twist here is that Todd and de la Cruz are rarely alone.
The NFR ended Dec. 15. Across two weeks of live ESPN coverage, Todd and de la Cruz emerged as stars. They are friends and have been roping together since they met at an Arizona junior rodeo 10 years ago. Todd grew up on the family ranch in Willcox; de la Cruz, a Desert View High School grad, hails from a fourth-generation rodeo family with ranch properties off Old Nogales Highway and in Marana.
In the rare schedule-free week before the NFR, they didn't spend much time watching football.
"They roped every single day,'' Olivar says. "They'd rope in the morning, they'd have lunch, and then they'd rope all afternoon. They were so serious that my brother, George Aros, would get a fresh load of steers every few days to keep them sharp. You hear about all the glamour and glory of the National Finals, but I don't think they know what it is to kick back and relax.''
Finishing second in the world may have given Todd and de la Cruz some financial freedom, and perhaps open some endorsement doors, but they did not return to Tucson and schedule a parade of public appearances.
"We're right back to tearing down the highways,'' Todd says. "Nobody else is taking time off, so we had better not. If you're doing good, you're always going.''
Todd and de la Cruz won six team roping championships in 2007. Got a map? They won in Loveland, Colo., and in Clovis, N.M. They won in Oklahoma City and in Caldwell, Idaho. They estimate they were on the road for 275 days, which is the equivalent of about 110,000 miles in their trailer-pullin' pickups.
Todd is married (Carly) and has a 3-year-old daughter, Madilyn. The young couple is expecting a second child in June. In May, de la Cruz will marry Arena Marie Robertson, who, much like Carly Todd, is from a rodeo family.
They have made a mark in Pro Rodeo — everybody knows their names now — but the tricky part in the ridiculously competitive PRCA is staying on or near the top. Or, as Todd likes to say, "To keep from going broke.''
The prime age of a world-class cowboy's career is, as with most sports, 28 to 35, which suggests that Todd, 23, and de la Cruz, 24, are just scratching the surface. But the rodeo grind is so great that it often chews up top performers before they reach their prime.
"I'll be ropin' till I'm dead, but I won't be rodeo-ing for more than three or four more years,'' says Todd. "My little girl will be 6 or 7 then, and I'd just as soon be home, working the ranch, working cows. I don't want anyone to ask Madilyn about her daddy and hear her say, 'He's always off at the rodeo.'"
The Wrangler ProRodeo Tour does not relent. In 2008, five new elite-class events have been added to the chaotic schedule. The first official event, in Odessa, Texas, is Jan. 4, and the season goes through mid-December.
On Thursday, Todd took his Dodge truck in for some pre-2008 tour maintenance. The time to celebrate has come and gone.
"We've been blessed with a little bit of success,'' he says. "We became a fire in the last part of the year, so the trick now is to keep that fire lit.''
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