“Then I asked my mom, ‘What do you think?’ She said, ‘Yeah, I want to go to Las Vegas.’ That’s all she said, no more, no less.”īut Myrtle Begay’s eight-word reply was plenty. Should I attempt to try it, put some effort in, find a partner? I was going back-and-forth at home, thinking about it. “I didn’t have a full-time partner, so I started asking around, talking to some of the guys at the top. “That kind of put that carrot in front of me,” Begay said.

It’s the kind of jolt that can lead to a trip to the season-ending NFR. In team roping, when you’ve got $10,000 banked by early March, it can make you start thinking that a slowdown should perhaps be a speed-up. “I didn’t rope the way I wanted to, and we took third, but I still got $10,000.” “The next thing I know, I was in the top four with a chance to rope for a million dollars,” Begay said. Begay teamed up with heeler Matt Sherwood in the early March event. It pretty much began by qualifying for a spot at The American, a prestigious multi-round rodeo that finishes up inside ATT Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. So how did he regain the mindset required to earn a return to Las Vegas, especially while holding other big responsibilities, not the least of which is raising his 2-year-old daughter? I don’t want to be one of those guys who retires and then comes back three years later.”Ĭoincidentally, three years after his last NFR appearance, Begay is back, qualifying 11th as a team roping header. I don’t know what you’d call it - a slowdown?” the 38-year-old Begay pondered. “As far as the ‘R’ word goes, I wouldn’t really say that.

And done with the grind of trying to get back into the top 15, to reach another NFR? Well, thanks to some direction from his mom, apparently not. The eight-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifier, most recently in 2018, significantly scaled back his schedule in 20, finishing outside the top 50 both years.īut retired? Not yet. Rumor around the rodeo world had it that team roper Derrick Begay perhaps decided to call it a career over these past couple of years. Derrick Begay during his and Brady Minor’s winning effort Friday night in the second go-round of the NFR.

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