Event: Team Roping

Great Lakes Circuit Standings: 9th

Potter finds fountain of youth roping with grandson
By Jim Bainbridge , Senior Public Relations Coordinator, PRCA

At 73 years old, Mel Potter still team ropes with his grandson, Roy Alexander, in the Great Lakes Circuit, a partnership that spans three generations and 100 years of life experience.

“When you put it that way, I guess we ought to be pretty good,” Potter said.

Potter says this with a smile because he knows that he and his partner have done some things this year, surprised some people, just one year after he had surgery to replace the structure of his roping shoulder with one made of plastic and metal.

They have been good enough to win the Sept. 20-21 Lakes Region Horse Fest in Little Falls, Minn., get to the point of qualifying for the Dodge Great Lakes Circuit Finals Rodeo and to make something special of his 50th year of ProRodeo competition.

Potter was one of a handful of rookies when he qualified for the first National Finals Rodeo in 1959 as a tie-down roper, and he is now one of only two original NFR competitors who are active in PRCA rodeos, along with Bobby Goodspeed.

Potter is the only member of the original NFR cast who might have a son or daughter competing in this year’s 50th Wrangler NFR in Las Vegas. His daughter, two-time World Champion Sherry Cervi, is making a late-season charge for a spot among the Top 15 barrel racers.

“We really haven’t talked about that (possibility),” Potter said, “but it would be really neat if it happened.”

Potter was taking graduate courses at the University of Arizona in 1959 when he decided he was going to take a break from school and give rodeo his full attention, intrigued by the creation of a new big-money championship event, the National Finals Rodeo in Dallas.

The Potters had been cranberry farmers since his grandfather started the family business in Wisconsin in 1880. Nobody in the family had ever been involved in rodeo. Potter’s dad, Roy, didn’t know much about the sport and didn’t care to, but he knew enough about his son not to try to change his mind.

“My dad was a hardheaded businessman,” Potter said, “and all he said when I told him I was going to go rodeo and make lot of money was, ‘That’s good; I think you should do it.’

“By year’s end, I was doing OK, sitting 11th or 12th in the standings. At the NFR, I won the fifth round and placed in another. When I got back home, my trailer needed four tires, my horse was broke down and I had just enough money to enter a few winter events (he had total earnings for the year of $7,944, more than a third of that from a tie-down roping win in Denver).”

His dad gave him the once-over and asked him what he thought about his life in rodeo now.

“I guess,” Potter answered, “I better go up to Wisconsin and learn how to raise cranberries.”

For the last 50 years, he has managed to maintain a nice balance between the family businesses – the Potters also operated a mink farm for a while – and his love of all things rodeo. He had a stock contracting business and still raises championship horses. He served on the PRCA Board of Directors, and his many acts of community service earned him the Ben Johnson Memorial Award in 2005, the same year he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

And he kept on roping in PRCA events, whenever his duties with the cranberry business would allow.

The Potters are involved in three cranberry operations in the Midwest. The family-owned marsh covers 163 acres. They have a partnership with another family that covers a 160-acre marsh and one other with a consortium of four friends that has 110 acres.

“That isn’t much land for corn,” Potter said, “but it’s a lot for cranberries.”

The combined 433 acres makes the Potters one of the largest producers for the Ocean Spray co-operative of growers.

Potter and his wife of 54 years, Wendy, also operate the Potter Ranch in Marana, Ariz., along with their middle daughter, JoLynn, and her husband, George Alexander. The ranch has been producing top-level timed-event horses since 1973, drawing on both spouses’ expertise; Wendy was an NFR qualifier in 1970 and 1972.

Potter stock has taken numerous cowboys and cowgirls, including youngest daughter Cervi, to the National Finals Rodeo.

“We run a lot of cattle in Wisconsin, too,” Potter said. “We’re in Bancroft, Wis., now, not where I was raised in Wisconsin Rapids. We run cattle and raise cranberries, and we have some irrigated farm ground that we lease out.

“It seems like we are coming up (from Arizona) later and going back earlier,” Potter said. “We’re in the Midwest starting in May, and we go back about October, so it’s close to five months.”

He may be sticking around a bit longer this year – if he and his grandson go to the Dodge Great Lakes Circuit Finals Rodeo in Louisville, Ky., Nov. 13-15.

With close to $5,000 in earnings through Sept. 22, Potter is having his most successful season in ProRodeo in more than a decade, revitalized by the shoulder surgery and the chance to rope with Roy.

“After making the NFR in 1959, I never really rodeoed hard again,” Potter said, “but I never stopped competing. It’s always been part of my life. I roped so much that I wore out my shoulder. I had eight months of rehab after the surgery, so you really appreciate being able to do this. This has been fun.”