NFR Team Roping Long-Awaited World Championships- Andrew Ward and Jake Long
Written By Dee Yates
Photos By Lara St Jaques
There are moments in rodeo that transcend competition—moments where years of dedication, sacrifice, and unwavering belief finally converge into something so profound it takes your breath away. The 2025 PRCA World Championship team roping title wasn’t just won by Andrew Ward and Jake Long; it was earned through every near-miss, every heartbreak, and every morning they chose to believe one more time. Standing in the Thomas & Mack for Round 10, these two men carried stories that run deeper than any scoreboard could measure. Ward, at 35, with six NFR qualifications already behind him. Long, at 41, making his fifteenth trip to Las Vegas—fifteen years of coming so close to that gold buckle you could almost taste it, only to watch it slip away.
The mathematics of that final night weren’t in their favor. Of the four teams still in championship contention, Ward and Long had the slimmest chance. Long spent the entire day managing expectations, telling anyone who’d listen they had maybe a 2% shot. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he’d say, protecting his heart the way you learn to after carrying that weight for fifteen years. But rodeo has never been about mathematics alone. When Ward and Long backed into the box eleventh in the round, they drew the kind of steer that makes ropers’ eyes light up—one that had already earned other teams nearly seventy thousand dollars earlier in the week. Ward’s approach was beautifully simple: “Draw a good steer, get a good start, go as fast as I can without messing up.” No heroics. No forcing. Just trust in the process they’d built together.
What unfolded was poetry in motion. Ward turned his steer with footwork, not theatrics—the mark of a true craftsman who understands that consistency beats flash every single time. He laid up a shot so clean, so predictable, that Long had the opening he’d been waiting for all week. “Tonight was the first one that I heeled fast,” Long would say later, his voice still carrying the wonder of it. “I felt like I did speed the run up a little bit tonight.” The flag fell at 3.9 seconds. Ward and Long celebrated—but they didn’t know yet what they’d truly won. Immediately behind them, the drama intensified. Clint Summers and Jade Corkill caught their notoriously tough left-breaking steer in 4.2 seconds—an impossibly good run. Then Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira matched Ward and Long’s time exactly, splitting the round money. Kolton Schmidt and Jonathan Torres, sitting pretty in the driver’s seat, only needed to catch their steer to secure the title. Schmidt’s steer checked off hard right. No time.
The world championship hung in the air while calculators came out and numbers were crunched. Even after their victory lap for winning the NFR aggregate—44.0 seconds on nine head—Ward and Long still didn’t know if gold buckles came with it. “That is an incredible thing to not know,” Ward said later, “and then have the lady tell us. We already took our pictures with the average win…and then she tells us we’re world champs. I’m like, you’re kidding me. What a neat deal.” Long searched the faces around him for confirmation. He looked to Joe Beaver, tried to read Driggers’ expression—nobody seemed certain. Then Ward’s dad gave a thumbs-up from above. Ward thought it might be for the aggregate, but his father knew the numbers. He’d already done the math. They were world champions.
When the reality finally settled in, Ward felt relief wash over him first. “I was honestly just thankful it was over,” he admitted. “Ten runs is stressful…For it to finally go our way is an honor.” But for Long, the emotion ran deeper—a release of pressure he’d carried not just for ten nights, but for fifteen years. “You start thinking maybe it’s not meant to be,” Long said, his voice thick with feeling. “And that’s fine too in a sense of I’ve had a wonderful career and I had come to terms with that. I wasn’t going to maybe achieve that ultimate goal.” He’d been carrying sadness all week, second-guessing his heeling even when their runs looked flawless. “We were making really, really great runs and they were just kicking us in the teeth in the rounds,” he explained. Round 9 became the turning point. When Long caught that leg, he knew they were still alive. And Ward—understanding his partner’s struggle—wouldn’t let him stay in that dark place. He showed up with encouragement, with belief, with the kind of partnership that makes team roping the beautiful, complicated dance it is.
What carried Ward and Long to that championship wasn’t luck—it was a process they trusted completely. Ward is a creature of habit, building his runs at home through repetition until his response becomes instinct. “If I come out of that I’ll hate myself for it,” he said simply. Long explained what makes Ward so formidable when pressure mounts: “He turns the cow more with footwork versus just kind of amateur rodeo, lay-your-horse-down style. He makes my job incredibly easy…just lays him up super easy to heel fast.” This year’s steers ran softer than usual, which tempted some teams into chasing speed at the expense of consistency. Ward and Long refused that trap. They stuck to their plan even when it would have been easy—tempting, even—to deviate. “It shouldn’t all be on him,” Long said. “It is called team roping…If either one of us gets stuck in ‘we’re going to do it this certain way’…eventually it won’t work. So we have to be willing to change with the times.” When Long heeled that tenth steer, adrenaline nearly cost him. His pinky finger got in the way as he started pulling back before completing his wrap. “Luckily it was in there,” he laughed afterward, the relief evident. Ward noticed, but what impressed him more was Long’s mental toughness. “I was very proud of Jake. He was like an old vet. He would not come out of the process of what we said we were going to come do. And it’s hard to do that for 10 nights here.”
Every championship belongs as much to the horses as the riders, and this year proved no different. Ward rode his 2011 gelding RLJ Cashnczechtafame—called Henry—instead of Biscuit, his former aggregate championship mount. Biscuit had been dealing with an abscess, and Ward couldn’t practice on him properly. The switch paid off magnificently. Long rode Hezaluckysonofagun—’Copper’ in the barn—a six-year-old gelding with both exceptional talent and an endearing personality. “He wants to be your best friend,” Long said warmly. “He would literally pin me up against the wall…want you to just sit there and scratch on him. He made heeling in here as easy as it’s ever been for me.” Ward had pushed Long to commit to the young horse earlier in the year, even when the risk felt substantial. “For him to step out in faith with me and let me ride that horse meant the world to me,” Long said. “He has not cost us 1 cent the whole time.”
When the celebration finally began in earnest, both men knew exactly where to direct their first expressions of gratitude. Long didn’t wait—he ran straight to his wife Tasha, needing to wrap his arms around the woman who’d carried as much of this weight as he had. “I didn’t want to wait until afterwards,” Long explained. “I had to run up there and at least hug Tasha…She has put up with way more than she should.” Ward called his wife Hayli from downstairs. “Without her, I don’t know how we do it,” he said simply. “You don’t see the work that she puts in…Having a great wife, it’s incredible. It’s a gift from God.” These women stood behind their champions through every disappointment, every close call, every moment when it would have been easier to walk away. This victory belongs to them too.
Jake Long is now a $3.3 million heeler who’s won the Bob Feist Invitational, the Wildfire, the George Strait, and two NFR aggregate titles. After fifteen attempts, after being one of the oldest heelers in the arena, after making peace with the possibility that a gold buckle might never be his—he finally has one. “I’m not getting younger,” Long reflected. “I think I was the third oldest heeler here. You start thinking maybe it’s not meant to be. Maybe it’s not going to be something that’s in the cards for you…So I’ve cried more tonight than I’ve cried in a long time because it was highly emotional.” For Ward, this championship means something beautifully specific: getting his partner across that finish line. “I remember watching this rodeo on the couch, and Jake looking like he was going to win one when I was in my 20s,” Ward said. “He’s been doing it a long time, and so it is a neat thing to get him across the finish line. It’s great for me, but I was so pumped when Jake, he’s got it now, so that’s awesome.” Long’s final words carry the weight of every year, every close call, every moment he wondered if his time had passed: “It doesn’t seem real. They can’t take it away from me now.”
What unfolded in the Thomas & Mack on that tenth night wasn’t just about athletic excellence—though there was plenty of that. It was about partnership. About refusing to give up on each other when doubt crept in. About trusting a process even when the odds say you should panic. About the kind of friendship that shows up with encouragement when your partner needs it most. When asked to sum up what this championship means, both men kept returning to the same word: gratitude. Grateful for their wives who sacrifice and support. Grateful for horses who perform when it matters most. Grateful for each other’s steadiness under pressure. Grateful that after all these years, all these near-misses, all these moments of wondering if it was meant to be—it finally was. This is what makes rodeo beautiful. This is what keeps us coming back, year after year, to witness moments like these. Because every once in a while, the story that’s been fifteen years in the making finally gets its perfect ending. Andrew Ward and Jake Long are your 2025 PRCA World Champion team ropers, and they earned every single second of that title.
Andrew Ward and Jake Long claimed the 2025 PRCA world championship with $373,838.26 and $372,091.71 respectively, Kaleb Driggers and Junior Nogueira finished second with $367,885.01 each, Clint Summers and Jade Corkill took third with $344,921.51 and $345,246.73, Kolton Schmidt and Jonathan Torres placed fourth with $338,807.51 and $330,541.41, Tanner Tomlinson and Travis Graves finished fifth with $276,605.71 and $242,717.48, Lightning Aguilera and Kaden Profili took sixth with $261,550.58 and $260,350.38, Dawson Graham and Dillon Graham placed seventh with $248,192.21 and $248,192.23, Dustin Egusquiza and Levi Lord finished eighth with $237,829.39 and $235,447.88, Derrick Begay and Colter Todd took ninth with $235,540.94 and $233,188.59, Tyler Wade and Wesley Thorp placed tenth with $224,632.41 each, Riley Minor and Brady Minor finished eleventh with $210,825.41 and $210,825.43, Cyle Denison and Lane Mitchell took twelfth with $199,907.28 and $200,936.80, Clay Smith and Coleby Payne placed thirteenth with $199,835.04 and $190,638.41, Jake Smith and Douglas Rich finished fourteenth with $194,087.46 and $183,337.45, Luke Brown and Trey Yates rounded out the top fifteen with $177,067.86 and $177,067.85.
