Joe Beaver got started roping as a child, but when you ask him, he was just having fun. He didn’t know he would grow up to be an eight-time World Champion.
There are pictures of Beaver on a horse from a very young age and then he went with his father to roping where he would watch the slack after they delivered piggin’ strings
“It all started for me in a goat pen on a Shetland pony,” he said. “I think my dad always wanted it to be fun and fun was in the goat pen.”
Enjoying himself was the name of the game, but time in the practice pen always turned serious. However, Beaver’s father, a student of the game himself, made sure that the two wouldn’t take their grumbling into the house from the arena.
Beaver says that the fun stayed in the goat pen and that made it easier as he progressed, he kept it fun when he went to the National Finals Rodeo.
“It sounds stupid but it really wasn’t anything different, because I’d already done it a gazillion times for fun but I was still having fun at the National Finals,” Beaver said.
Beaver went on to become a household name in the world of calf roping.
“People will tell me, ‘my kid is going to rope, what should they do? What did you do?’ And I say, I had fun.”