A visitor from our website asked to know more about Daniel Green.
So, I tracked him down at the USTRC Finals and he was very gracious. And seemed more than happy to let a complete stranger take up his time asking personal questions.
His wife, Shawnda, and their two daughters are his rodeo traveling partners. His faith and priority of keeping the family together is admirable. Daniel struck me as a good guy with the right outlook and we wish him all the best rodeo has to offer.
How did you and your wife meet?
Shawnda lived in Oakdale and we high school rodeoed together. She’s two years younger than me and we didn’t start dating until she started college. We got married November 22, 1997 and we have two daughters; Grace, who was born August 23, 1999; and Kindle, who was born on May 7th of this year.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in Stockton, California and lived in that area all my life. Then in 1997 I moved to Oakdale.
When did you start roping?
From the time I was a baby. My folks have videos of me in diapers dragging a rope around.
How old were you when you knew this was what you wanted to do?
Basically I wanted to rope and rodeo my whole life. If I had been a little bigger and faster I might have wanted to pursue football. But I knew early on that I wasn’t fast enough to go further with it.
How old were you when you realized your roping level exceeded other kids your age?
Probably in Junior High School. At that age you really haven’t thought about much else. I grew up with a lot of talented kids: the Cowdens, the Locketts. I high school rodeoed with Mike Boothe and college rodeoed with Wes Moore. All these people lived in the central valley of California, so there was a lot of competition.
I can remember at one high school rodeo there were Liddon and Cody Cowden as a team, Brent and Blaine Lockett as a team, and my brother, Chris, and I as a team. So our high school rodeos weren’t always that friendly. Every one of the guys that I just mentioned has made the NFR except for Blaine, and he’s just never tried. So there was some tough competition even then.
Don’t you think that was good for your roping?
Oh yeah, exactly. It was good to grow up in that kind of competition.
Were you active in other sports in high school?
Oh, I loved to play football. I played baseball some and I liked that too but I had to choose. I couldn’t rodeo as much as I wanted to, play football and play baseball, so I gave up baseball.
What were your favorite subjects in school?
Math was probably my best subject. I probably wasn’t into academics as much as I should have been. I was more interested in rodeo and football.
If you could say one thing to your daughters that they would keep for the rest of their life, what would it be?
To keep their faith in Jesus Christ, be able to receive the salvation He has given us, and that God is good all the time. A lot of bad things happen, but that’s because of people. God is good and don’t forget that.
People tend to blame God for a lot of things.
Yes, well God has done everything He needs to do for me with the salvation of Jesus. I need a savior because I wasn’t good enough. God gave me that right through Jesus and I just need to receive it. He’s done all he actually needs to do for me.
Now, do I want him to help me with other things? Yes I do. But I’m not going to get mad if those things don’t happen and I know God is always working on my behalf. God’s given me comfort, strength and salvation. I still rely on Him and lean on Him; He’s my Lord and my Savior and I want to do what He wants me to do.
What issues in the world today concern you the most?
Basically, how far from God the major societies in the world are. With things like snipers on the loose who are shooting innocent people for nothing. I know murder is murder, whether it’s a bar fight, or you catch your wife cheating, whatever - it’s still murder. A lot of people have no care for human life.
It’s amazing to me, someone can accidentally turn in front of another car that they didn’t even see; and the other driver will get mad and pull out a gun and want to shoot them. That’s not the way God intended us to live. He has given us free will and we have daily choices to make. Do we want to do what’s right; or do we want to do what we want? Our flesh doesn’t always want to do what’s right.
When did you get saved?
When I was a sophomore in high school I went to church with a friend and received Jesus as my Lord and Savior, but at the time I didn’t realize what I’d done. I went on living and did what I wanted to do and the whole time I thought I was a pretty good guy. I was never a drug addict, never was a bad guy, but I was doing things contrary to what God wanted me to do.
The Bible says, “you show me your faith by what you say, but I’ll show you my faith by what I do.” I had asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior, but I never really made Him my Lord and Savior. God may say I was officially saved back in high school, but when I read that scripture I’m not sure. When I started roping with Allen Bach in 1998, at the end of the year, I recommitted my life to Jesus Christ and started trying to live the life He wanted me to live.
It’s not enough to just say that you’re a Christian. If I tell you I’m your friend, but then walk off and tell bad stories about you, am I friend? No, I’m not. I can’t say I’m a Christian and then not act like one.
Who were your heroes growing up?
My father. I have a great family and such a great wife. I’ve had a great life actually. I’m thirty years old, my parents are loving and supportive, my wife’s loving and supportive and I have two beautiful daughters and I get to do what I enjoy doing.
But I won’t rodeo if I have to do it being broke, I would do something else. Although I’m striving to be better, I’m still pulling it off. It’s been working and I’m getting to do what I want. I’ve been really blessed.
When I was growing up my dad was there for me and took me to football games, baseball games and ropings. That’s the dad I want to be for my daughters. So, the “fifty rodeo” rule is really going to help me. I had a couple more years of rodeoing hard and then I want to be there when my daughter’s playing soccer or whatever. I want to be there for that. I want to be the Dad they need me to be – more than I want to be a world champion team roper.
So there will come a time when I draw a line. I’ll try to make it work every way I can but not to sacrifice my family.
Who do you credit with helping you get where you are right now?
Ultimately my father. He taught me how to rope and took me to ropings when I was growing up. I had other help along the way too. Walt Woodard is my uncle by marriage and Ricky Green is my cousin. They helped me in key areas like how to win mentally at the top level. They had been there themselves and were able to help me through what they had learned.
I’ve had help in other areas too. In 1994, my first year at the NFR, my horse wasn’t working very good and Walt and Aunt Darlene let me ride their horse. That was a big key in my first trip to the National Finals. Once you’ve been there, you know how to get back and it becomes a little easier.
What does your dad do for a living?
He’s a general contractor. He married my mom when he was eighteen and had my sister when he was nineteen; had my brother when he was twenty-one and had me when he was twenty-three. So he was a "working dad" who roped on the weekends.
His family was from Oklahoma and already into roping when they moved to California; and in 1976, he was the champion of the amateur association in California. He and his brothers, Everett and Virgil, were pretty dominant ropers in when they first got there.
What do you do for fun?
Now fun for me is hanging out with my family.
If you had a day off at home what would you do?
This is so exciting - we might just relax. We’re gone so much and the traveling is hectic. It’s a total blessing to have a wife that will load up and go with me – and she actually wants to be there with the kids for me. Being on the road has to be hard on them because it’s not easy for me, and I’m doing what I love.
She goes with me because we feel it’s important to be together as a family. I know its torture for her and the kids sometimes. I tell her that I don’t feel as much sympathy for as I do the kids, because she chose to be with me and they didn’t have a choice.
Where would you like to be five years from now?
Five years from now I would love to be on a big rodeo tour. A tour with twenty-five or thirty rodeos a year, like the Tour Finale we just left in Dallas, where the winners won almost $35,000. Then you’d have the television coverage, which is beneficial to the cowboys and the sponsors.
Without sponsors it would be much more of a struggle for cowboys. I'm very grateful to Wrangler, Cactus Ropes and Heel-O-Matic for their support. Without sponsors like these, it would be incredibly difficult to do what we do because it's so expensive.
My uncle, Walt Woodard, was a world champion and basically had to quit rodeo to make a living for his family. The world champion shouldn’t have to do that. He was the best in the world but made the decision, after accomplishing that goal, to go on with another part of his life and become financially stable.
Rodeo has made some great strides with the Winter Tour Finale, the Summer Tour Finale, and the National Finals. Plus we have a chance to win money at some big ropings during the year that cowboys in other events don’t have.
I still think rodeo doesn’t pay like it should to be the best in the world. I would love to see rodeo keep moving forward and if it doesn’t, I really don’t know where I’ll be in five years. If rodeo hadn’t improved to where it is now, I wouldn’t go hard like I do. I will always rope and rodeo, but not to the degree I do now.
How exciting was winning the Timed Event for you?
It was extremely exciting. I don’t want to sound cocky, but I really thought I had a great chance to win it my first year in 1995. I was in the lead and then missed a bulldogging steer. I had bulldogged all my life and was really disappointed because it was one of my best events. I’d never laid a tripping steer down in my life, and the first five I ever laid down was there that year.
The next year I got hurt and had to stop competing. The third year I was in the lead again and roped a tripping steer around the neck. I flirted with winning a lot and then something would go wrong. One year in the heading I hickeyed a horn on one steer and my heeler lost his rope on another. My best event, and there I was with 120 seconds on two steers.
This year everything fell into place and it was a total blessing from God. I got on the best calf horses I’d ever ridden there. The bulldogging horse I rode really fit me well. It just all worked out and it was such a relief.
I knew that God had given me the ability to be the best timed-event cowboy – at least for 365 days until time to defend it again. It was disappointing to be turned away so many times.
Guys like K. C. Jones and Paul Tierney come to the Timed Event Championship and are very successful because they never beat themselves. If little things go wrong they won’t let it turn into big things. For me, I didn’t have a lot of things happen; but when it did, it was big enough to devastate my chances.
This year several things came very close to going wrong for me. I came close to losing a bulldogging steer and taking a 60-second time. My heeler almost lost his rope and got dallied at the knot. Then I noticed my latigo was almost half-in-two. Those are the kind of things that always happened to me in the past. This year I felt it was finally my time to win.
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