Chism Goodrich is a cowboy prodigy.
Yes, you read that right.
Goodrich, freshman business management major, is gone every weekend, traveling with his parents to rodeos across the country. He has not spent a Saturday at home since February.
“He will take a weekend, drive through the night, go to a rodeo, compete, load everything back up and drive somewhere else,” Ben Zeiser, junior business management major, said. “In one weekend he was in North Carolina, then the bottom of Georgia, and then Texas and back in one weekend for three different rodeos — just to compete.”
Zeiser has frequently worked with horses and cattle, spent his summers tending to ranches and is one of Goodrich’s best friends. The two connected over their mutual interest in rodeo, and Zeiser is one of the few people at Union who has seen Goodrich compete.
“He’s really good. He’s got a chance at making it big time,” Zeiser said. “If he makes it to nationals, he’d be competing with grown men who have made their whole lives about the sport.”
Talking to him, Goodrich is not what I imagined a real-life cowboy to be like. When I thought of a cowboy, my mind went to Clint Eastwood’s character in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Cool and proud with a confident demeanor that can only be shaken by an empty pack of cigarettes. The type of guy who makes everything look easy, not a 17-year-old in slim-fit blue jeans and a heathered gray hoodie who would sooner bring up wanting to improve his grades than mention he’s on the brink of making it big.
Goodrich currently competes in the International Prior Rodeo Association (IPRA), the second-largest rodeo league in the world, specializing in calf roping, a timed event in which the contestant tries to completely lasso and tie down a calf as quickly as possible. The contestant begins by lassoing a calf while riding a horse before he dismounts the horse and throws the calf down by hand. The roper then finishes by tying three of the calf’s legs together with a “pigging string.”
He has been competing in rodeos all year long, hoping to earn enough points to secure a spot in the national finals — a feat that only two others his age have accomplished.
“If he makes Nationals this year, he’d be one of three people to make nationals under 18 years old,” Zeiser said. “It would be a nationwide achievement.”
Goodrich started competing in 2014 at the age of 7 and began taking his hobby seriously when he was 12. Both his parents were involved in rodeo, with his dad at one point being the 23rd-ranked cowboy in the world.
“My parents got into it in their early teens, so I was pretty much born into it,” Goodrich said. “They have pictures of me when I was a baby holding me onto a horse.”
He began taking rodeo seriously at the age of 12, fully devoting himself to trying to follow in his father’s footsteps as a calf roper. As with any professional athlete, in order to be competitive, you must be constantly improving.
“Before I came to college, I worked out every morning at five o’clock, went to school, and then came home and would practice for three or four hours every afternoon.”
Goodrich began his freshman year at Union this fall and has struggled with balancing his life as a full-time college student and a full-time cowboy. Union encourages its students to get involved, offering many different student-led organizations, but what about those whose involvement takes them outside of campus?
“There’s nobody that really realizes the impact rodeo has on my life,” Goodrich said.
Where much of Union’s community lies in participating in organizations alongside fellow students, Goodrich often has to choose between pursuing his interests and creating community on campus outside of rodeo. After all, Union does not have a rodeo club.
“It’s a constant struggle of what do I want to do today? Do I want to do something on campus or do I want to go home and work?” Goodrich said. “Every day, I have to constantly decide: what am I going to get more out of?”
He ends up somehow doing both.
Instead of withdrawing from campus life, Goodrich embraced it, often socializing in Barefoots, frequenting student life events and even joining Greek life.
Like a true cowboy, Goodrich does not back away from challenges, instead seeing them as opportunities to work harder, or as he likes to say, “put his nose to the grindstone.”
“It’s awesome to see him work at it because he’s doing it, not just for the love of it, but also to pursue excellence at it,” Zeiser said. “When you’re doing it in a ranching community, you’re doing it for work, but to him, it’s just fun.”
If there is anything that Goodrich has learned during his time as a cowboy, it’s that if he makes himself believe he can do something, he can do it, and while he may never tell you, he can usually do it really well. You do not last 10 years in rodeo without being tough.
“You have to be in the right mindset: even though you may not be the best, you have to make yourself believe that you are the best.”
Goodrich competes year-round, participating in multiple events per trip, and sometimes weeks will go by without a single win, which can make those lengthy drives that much longer.
“We drove 22 hours to New York, and we’d been to five rodeos so far that trip, and I hadn’t won anything yet — but on number six I made it count,” Goodrich said. “It took a lot of mentally preparing, watching videos and not getting down on yourself.”
Goodrich would never tell you that he is the best calf roper, and I don’t even think he ultimately wants to be, but instead, he wants to best exemplify what it means to pursue excellence no matter the difficulty. It would be easy for Goodrich to be a full-time student and full-time cowboy if he did those things halfway, but he pushes himself in every aspect of his life so that he can glorify God not just in what he does, but how he does it.
Although few people at Union know or even understand what Goodrich does on the weekends, he has taken what he has learned from his rodeos and brought it back to campus, showing those who know him what a true cowboy looks like.