TRASH is about training life champions.
Team Roping At the Schmidt House is a three-day camp offered by Ronald Schmidt that aims to teach kids between the ages of 10 to 16 years old, the skills necessary to be successful at team roping, but more importantly they’re teaching the skills needed to be successful at life.
“The kids here get to learn skills from a lot of Canada’s best,” said Schmidt.
The Schmidt ranch lies more than 20 minutes west of Barrhead. More than 50 kids travelled from local areas; such as Barrhead, Mayerthrope and Carstairs while some travelled from as far west as British Columbia and as far east as Saskatchewan.
“We get Canadian Finals Rodeo competitors to come out and donate their time to teach the kids the skills needed in team roping. We’ve been successful over the years because of folks donating their time. I couldn’t do it by myself,” said Schmidt.
TRASH entered its eighth year with more than 50 young cowboys and cowgirls registered for training.
“I hope we can make it to 10 years, but I don’t know if I can do it or not,” said Schmidt.
Through the three days of scheduled instruction, the aspiring rodeo athletes are split into three groups according to their abilities. At TRASH, the kids are exposed to roping for the entire day at the Schmidt ranch.
“We take a group of young ones and start them in the bottom arena where we have dummies attached to a quad where they can learn at a slower pace. The middle group will go to the other arena where they will face real, but slower cattle. The more advanced group will stay in the main ring where they will try their hand at roping the faster cattle,” said Schmidt.
Originally, TRASH was for kids 17 years old and under until it was switched to 16-years-old and under later on. Some of the first participants in the school have gone on to bigger and better things.
“We’ve had at least two CFR qualifiers that have come from this school. I wish I could say I had everything to do with it, but they rope a lot on their own. They now come and volunteer their time here at TRASH,” said Schmidt.
Unlike most other sports, roping doesn’t follow any sort of drills or even have a coach like baseball or hockey. The way you get better is by roping, said Schmidt.
Schmidt makes no bones about it, TRASH isn’t just about learning the ropes of team roping, it’s more about giving the kids life skills.
“It’s funny. With the more miles you put on, you learn not to really care how well they rope out there, it’s about developing the right attitude. You’re proud they can ride a horse and do the things you tell them to do, but that’s only half of it. The other half is if they feed their horses, if they do their chores and they’re respectful to the people helping them. That makes me way more proud than anything they do with roping,” said Schmidt.
