Clovis' Hisel claims world juniors title

CLOVIS — You’ve heard of gym rats. John Hisel has been kind of a rope rat.

Just like gym rats are always in the gym, or at least dribbling a basketball whenever they can, John has had a rope in his hands from the time he was a little kid.

He took to roping early, became skilled at it. Skilled enough that the weekend before last John was crowned a 2019 world champion at the Junior Worlds Open Team Roping Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada.

John took an interest in roping when he was six or seven, and is still only 16. From rope rat to world champ in about a decade.

“Oh, it was pretty mind-blowing to go up to such a big stage and win something,” said John, a Texico High sophomore, about his achievement in Vegas. “It was kind of an honor.”

John’s father, Glen Hisel, used to rope quite a bit on their ranch down near Elida. These days, most of Glen’s wrangling occurs with pliers and teeth — he’s a Clovis dentist — but when John was a little kid at that ranch, he saw Glen using a rope with cattle.

“We’ve always been around horses and stuff,” John recalled. “And my dad used to rope when he was younger. My dad got us into it and we never stopped.”

“He had a passion for it,” Glen said. “Roping is part of the deal, part of the industry. We were roping our cattle, and that was where he picked up on it.”

Glen remembers that a friend — Charles Good, a world champion steer roper himself — noticed how John was progressing. “He’d see John and he’d say, ‘Man, he can really handle a rope,’” Glen said. “And I thought, ‘Well, if this world champion roper would say that, maybe (John) does have an aptitude for it.’ Ever since then he’s been going after it and he’s been trying for success.”

Young John would rope the family’s Australian shepherd for practice, sometimes even try to rope cats. He’d rope anything he could, he just took to it.

There were a lot of things that John liked about roping.

“It just teaches you a lot,” he said. “You learn about responsibility. You learn to take care of animals. You learn to take care of your trucks and trailers. It’s money and time and everything like that.”

As John grew, so did his interest in roping and his competitive spirit.

“I think I went to my first roping (event) when I was about nine years old,” John said. “I remember it was kind of mind-blowing going to my first roping. I remember I watched and wanted to be out there.”

Once John started competing, he couldn’t stop. It was a craft, and like any craft, he had to hone it as he got older, work at it.

“I’ve always just kind of tried to get better and better, and kept going,” John said. “I just kept learning and getting better partners. I tried not to think about getting good. I thought about just keeping on roping.”

John kept on enough to participate in junior rodeos, jackpot rodeos, junior high rodeos, high school rodeos. He went to his first national competition in junior high. Last year as just a high school freshman, John was year-end rope champion and finished second at the junior worlds.

Throughout this past year he was competing in qualifiers and opens and doing well. And he qualified for this year’s junior worlds, held Dec. 12-14 in Las Vegas.

Competing was already natural to John, like riding a bike or dribbling a basketball are to a lot of other teens, so he didn’t let himself get nervous about it when competing in Las Vegas.

“I was just wanting to go out there and rope every one of my steers and see how it put me,” John said. “I didn’t really think about it too much. I kinda was roping and I just kept on roping. I try to not think about those things too much.”

John roped five steers across the three days. He wasn’t sure exactly how he had fared until the tournament’s end when they announced him as the winner.

“When they said it I was just blown away,” John recalled. “Kind of in shock.”

Winning a world title is evidence of how far John has come as a roper. So is his classification. Rodeo classifications run from 3 through 10, with 9 and 10 considered pro. John is already an 8.

“At 16 to be a No. 8 roper is a big achievement,” Glen said. “He told me the other day, ‘Dad, my goal was to be a No. 9 by the time I graduated high school.’ ... He thinks he can do that pretty easily in the next couple years.”

It seems John has a bright future in roping. He says he would like to earn a college rodeo scholarship, and then perhaps he can get on a pro circuit. But that’s still a way off.

“I kind of just try to forget about it because I know there’s more to win,” John said. “I try to keep my head level because I know I haven’t won everything.”

“Being a pro at roping, just like any sport, just depends on what kind of breaks you get,” Glen said. “If you work at it you can get breaks. All young ropers have aspirations of (turning pro). He has aspirations of it, of course.”