PENDLETON — At 4 a.m., Pake Sorey is seeding his family’s dry land wheat farm in Pendleton. Only a few weeks have passed since he’s won the steer roping competition at the Pendleton Round-Up. Congratulatory texts and phone calls continue to trickle in.

“Small town famous,” Sorey joked.

A country boy through and through, Sorey’s been riding horses since before he can remember, and roping is the family hobby. Growing up 15 minutes away from Round-Up stadium, Sorey attended the rodeo every year.

“They’re the top competitors in the world, so that always makes it a blast, especially when you’re a student of the sport, and you’re always watching and learning,” Sorey said.

His father, Tom Sorey, was among those top competitors, and in 1996 he won the steer roping title at Pendleton. Just two years old, Sorey joined his father for his victory lap around the arena. Three years later, Tom won the event for a second time.

In 2017, Sorey entered the Round-Up for the first time after completing his college rodeo career. Though Sorey says his father doesn’t pressure him to win, the expectations of him as the son of a two-time champion still weigh heavily. Sorey remembered that first year as “difficult, hard to get over the nerves.”

Though many who enter Pendleton are professionals who compete year-round, Sorey plans his training around his farming schedule. This can mean weeks without practice during a busy summer.

“I wheat farm full time and rope when we have time open,” Sorey said. “It’s just a hobby for me, and that makes it a little more fun, I think.”

Trent, Sorey’s younger brother, competes in steer roping both in college and at the Round-Up. For Trent’s first year at Round-Up, the brothers entered as partners in the team roping event. However, as both prefer to be headers, they’ve since parted ways.

Still, Pake Sorey always looks forward to when Trent comes home for summer vacation, which motivates him even more in practice.

“It’s pretty easy for us (Sorey and Tom) to get done at the end of the day and go, ‘I’m pretty worn out,’ ‘I am too, let’s go home.’ At least if Trent’s there and still trying to learn everything, it kind of prods us along and makes us go do it, which needs to happen anyhow,” Sorey said.

Sorey is still waiting for the year when the three of them can enter the Round-Up along with his wife and sister, who are both barrel racers.

This year, Sorey entered the steer roping competition as one of 93 participants, two of which were his father and Trent. If there’s any rivalry, it’s all in good spirit.

“It’s a blast. They’re a huge support system,” says Sorey. “Whenever we get to practice together, we’re all pulling for each other 100% all the time.”

In the first round, Sorey finished sixth with a time of 12.3 seconds, placing him in the top eight and earning him $1,678. Trent successfully roped his steer in 15.4 seconds, and Tom finished in 28.8 seconds.

In steer roping, the contestant chases a steer on horseback and ropes its horns. The contestant throws the rope over the right side of the steer’s body, and the horse turns left, hard enough to bring the 450-600 pound animal to the ground. The contestant then dismounts and ties three of its legs together, which must hold for at least six seconds.

The immense size of the steer differentiates this event from calf roping in which the competitor dismounts and wrangles the calf onto the ground by hand. Instead, steer roping requires more work on the part of the horse.

“It takes a really well-minded horse to do this event, and that’s probably a lot of the reason they don’t have this event everywhere,” Sorey said. “It’s hard to get into just because of the training factor.”

Both brothers rode Sorey’s bay quarter horse, Elvis, in the competition. He’s a seasoned veteran of the Round-Up and handles the crowd with composure. Quarter horses are the breed of choice for many rodeo competitors due to their ability to sprint. To increase traction on the grass at Pendleton, the horses typically wear ice nails on their shoes, which act like cleats.

In the second round, Sorey tied for eighth with a time of 14 seconds, winning himself $210. Trent finished fourth with a time of 12.8 seconds, winning $2,622. Tom tied his steer down, but a technicality resulted in a zero time and an end to his ambitions for a third championship.

The grass is one of Pendleton Round-Up’s unique features, dirt being the norm at most rodeos. The immense size of the arena and the 50 foot chute that both the livestock and the cowboy must race down (rodeos usually begin at standstill) before emerging onto the field are other distinctions that makes this one of the most exciting and difficult arenas to compete in. For this reason, Sorey calls this the “great equalizer.”

“In a normal environment, it’s hard to compete against a lot of the guys that do this for a living,” he said. “But even the best in the world struggle with Pendleton because there’s so many different variables.”

In the final round, Trent finished fourth at 15.2 seconds, winning $672. His combined time of 43.4 seconds placed him in second place overall and earned him an additional $6,292. Sorey finished the final round at 13.9 seconds, winning $1,152. His combined overall time of 40.2 seconds placed him just in front of his brother, winning him the championship title and an extra $7,236.

Besides hard work and skill, Sorey attributes his success to the luck of drawing relatively slow and cooperative steers and to the excellent performance of his horse, Elvis.

As his father did before him, Sorey shared his victory lap with Tom and Trent.

“That was pretty surreal. I was tickled that they did that,” Sorey said. “My brain was not with me at the moment. I was just trying to keep my cool.”

Although Sorey and Trent had entered the team roping event, hoping to get a chance at the All-Around title (awarded to the highest combined earner that competed in more than one event), neither made it past the second round. Still, they took advantage of the rest of the rodeo, having finished most of their farming duties prior to Round-Up. Sorey and Trent even went to watch Happy Canyon, where they both played the hero in a rescue scene that involved jumping into water and riding away on horseback. Having been actors in the show as children, the experience was different as adults in the audience.

“We haven’t gotten to watch the show very many times as spectators, and that was a kick in the pants,” Sorey said.

Now that Sorey has stepped into his father’s shoes, the pressure is on Trent to win the next championship.

“That’s what I told him — I didn’t tell him, but that’s what I told other people,” Sorey said laughing. “Now I don’t have to worry about winning it anymore. It can be Trent’s problem.”

In the aftermath, Sorey has experienced an outpouring of congratulations and support from the community in Pendleton.

“That’s what’s been the neatest part, you don’t realize how many people are pulling for you,” Sorey said.

All three Soreys qualified for the Columbia River Circuit Finals, but until then they’re taking it easy and focusing on their work. With Tom getting older, and Trent debating where he wants to live in the future, Pake Sorey is just happy to spend whatever time they have left training together.

“I’m pretty content,” he said. “To win that is pretty huge for me, takes a lot of pressure off competition for me now, and I can just keep doing what we’re doing and roping and having fun and getting to enjoy it while we can.”

This is part four of a six-part feature from Olivia Wolf, writer and editor ofthetinyvagabond.com.

She wrote the story about the 2023 Pendleton Round-Up and Happy Canyon Night Show. The work focuses on the perspectives of seven people:

• A grandmother and granddaughter from the Yakama tribe who stay in the Indian Village and whose family has been attending the Pendleton Round-Up since its founding in 1910.

• A husband and wife of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation who also stay in village and live on the reservation near Pendleton.

• Pake Sorrey, Pendleton local who won the 2023 Round-Up steer roping competition and whose father won twice before him.

• And Toni Minthorn, a horsewoman and 2023 Hall of Fame inductee who trains the Round-Up queen and princesses to do the grand entry.

The East Oregonian is publishing a new part each day of the week during the Pendleton Round-Up.