story by Ruth Nicolaus
Clay Holz is the newly crowned team roping, tie-down roping and chute dogging champion for the Nebraska Junior High School Rodeo Association.
The fourteen year old cowboy, a member of the Santee Sioux Nation and the sixth generation on the family ranch near Niobrara, Neb., also finished his eighth grade year as reserve champion in the goat tying. In addition to his other events, he competes in the ribbon roping, roping for Jessica Stevens.
For the tie-down and the ribbon roping, he rides a nine-year-old buckskin named Bean. For the team roping (he heels for Dane Pokorny), and the goat tying, he rides an eighteen-year-old paint named Paint Stick. Of his events, team roping is his favorite.
This summer, Clay will train horses for roping. He has about four head to work on, and this is the fourth year he’s trained them, and he enjoys it.
He’s also in charge of the family’s herd of Corrientes. The Holzs have about thirty head of heifers and cows that they raise for roping steers, and he makes sure they are fed and watered daily. He was also responsible for choosing the herd bull.
Around the ranch, Clay helps with the family’s herd of Angus cattle as well.
When he grows up, he’d like to be a PRCA tie-down roper and team roper. He is named after the famous team roper Clay O’Brien Cooper, and he admires “Clay O” and JoJo Lemond’s roping skills.
If he had his choice at a buffet line, Clay would head straight for the ribs. His favorite desserts are chocolate cake and apple pie, and the best food his mom cooks is grilled steak, fixed medium rare, with mushrooms on the side. He loves root beer and raspberry tea and Reese’s peanut butter cups.
Clay qualified for the National Junior High School Finals Rodeo each of his three years of junior high, and last year, finished tenth in the nation in the goat tying and sixteenth in the ribbon roping, with partner Jessica Stevens.
He will be a ninth grade student at Niobrara Public School this fall.
Clay has an older sister, Abbi, who is sixteen, and a younger brother, Cooper, who is nine. He is the son of Orvil and Kelli Holz.
