Team Penning: Speed, Skill . . . and Horse Sense

Lynda and Jerry McDaniel look restless as they stand outside the Coto de Caza arena where they, along with teammate Mike Ask, just competed in the first go-round of a weekend team penning competition. They listen attentively for the results to be announced, because a win here brings their three-person team closer to the next day’s finals.

When you think of team sports, team penning probably doesn’t immediately come to mind. The players don’t run and there’s no ball to throw, dribble or kick around. Even cross-trainer athletic shoes--for the athlete who does it all--are inappropriate. The players compete in Western hats, boots and jeans. The equipment includes saddles, aggressive horses and a corral.

But team penning has all the components of more conventional sports: speed, skill, patience and the ability to outsmart a rather beefy opponent--a cow.

Throwback to Branding Days

“It goes back to the old days when they wanted to brand cattle,” Jerry McDaniel says.

Only in team penning, cowboys, cowgirls and cowkids forgo the branding iron and do it for fun, for the competition and, sometimes, for the money. Teams of all men, all women or both men and women drive or “cut” three cows (with identical numbers on their backs) out of a herd of 30 cattle and guide them into a pen.

“You can’t touch the cattle at all,” rider Pat Siva says. “Neither the horse nor the rider can have any physical contact with the animals.”

How does a rider get the cattle’s attention?

“You holler a lot, that’s what you do,” says Siva, who rides on an all-women team in weeknight team penning competitions at Riverside Rancheros in Riverside. She describes team penning as being similar to cutting, but in cutting one rider dogs a single steer.

Simple . . . or Disastrous

“Team penning is much faster and with a whole herd,” Siva says. “There are three of us dashing around to get three cows out. Done right, it looks simple. If the cows don’t cooperate, it’s disastrous.”

The penning begins when the riders cross the starting line. When the last cow is in the corral, a rider throws an arm into the air to stop the clock. A time of 40 seconds or less is usually good enough to place.

Though anyone can participate in team penning, having a little horse sense is definitely an advantage.

“When you’re looking at a cow, you try to figure out which way it’s going to go--it helps to be psychic,” Siva says, laughing. “When you’re looking in the cow’s eyes, you’re wondering, ‘Which way is that sucker going to go?’ You’ve got to be there because these little guys (averaging about 400-500 pounds) run like the dickens.”

“Every time I enter the ring I get butterflies,” Jerry McDaniel says, “and my horse knows it. The horse does too--he swishes his tail and is all excited. But the minute you get galloping down the arena, it all goes away.”

There is some order to the action in the arena. McDaniel says most teams follow a simple strategy.

“One person at a time will go into the herd and start cutting out their number,” he says. “The holder (the third rider) will follow, keeping the other cows back. If you get more than four cows across the line, you’re disqualified, so somebody has to stay in front of the herd.”

The Quick and the Cows

It’s not all that easy to persuade a 500-pound cow to abandon its friends.

“They’re pretty social,” McDaniel says. “You have to shift (roles) real quick sometimes. The whole key to team penning is communication. You can have the best plan going--as long as the cattle go along with it. Most of the time they don’t, and you have to adapt.”

The frequency of team penning competitions and the growth of the Professional Team Penning Assn. and World Team Penning Assn. are evidence of a growing popularity for the sport. The McDaniels of Merced say they attend team penning competitions two or three times a month.

“We’ve penned in snow, we’ve penned in hundred-degree weather, we’ve never called one off,” says Lynda McDaniel, who also is secretary of the Professional Team Penning Assn.

Action in Merced

This weekend, Merced is hosting its annual team penning competition, at Merced Horsemen’s Arena. That event benefits the Crippled Children’s Society (in 9 years more than $90,000 has been raised for the society), and coming up in June are team penning events in Santa Maria and Reno, and Fourth of July Weekend in Madera.

“There’s a lot of action,” Pat Siva says, explaining the interest in the sport, “and it’s addictive, just like gambling. You think you’re going to win next time for sure.”

Siva, a former trick rider and stunt double, whose teammates are a polo instructor and a former barrel racer, insists that team penning is not a sport only a rodeo professional can love.

Jerry McDaniel agrees: “A lot of them are lifetime riders, but anybody who can ride a horse and can rein a horse can get involved in this sport.”

His Greatest Challenge

McDaniel should know, he took up horseback riding only six years ago. And as a sergeant in the California Highway Patrol, McDaniel says in his 21 years on the force--including time as a driving instructor--nothing has touched the challenge of team penning.

The popularity of the sport is quickly extending to other states, especially in the West, Lynda McDaniel says. As secretary, she sends out information that will help satellite areas establish sanctioned team penning events.

Men and women compete in the open divisions, and there also are divisions for women, seniors, even children 12 and younger.

“They have very competitive times,” Lynda McDaniel says of the youngsters.

“They do the same thing as the adults,” Jerry adds. “They have the same 30 head of cattle, they have to cut three out and steer them into the pen. Of course, the up-and-coming kids are the ones who are going to be the competition down the road.”

How do you turn kids away from skateboards and video games and turn them on to team penning?

“You put them on a horse,” Jerry says confidently.

Professional Team Penning Assn., 5600 W. Bailey Ave., Merced, Calif. 95340; (209) 723-5687.

World Team Penning Assn., 248 E. Monterey Ave, Pomona, Calif. 91767.