Bar-Heart-Bar brings high energy to ranch sorting events

Socorro may just be on the forefront of what one company hopes is the start of a new rodeo-like event.

For the second time this year, the Belen-based Bar-Heart-Bar Productions will be promoting a ranch sorting event at the Socorro Rodeo and Sports Complex, coming up Aug. 8-9.

While ranch sorting has been around for some time, said company co-owner Amador Gonzales, it hasn’t really gained much traction in New Mexico.

“We found it one day through a friend and went and tried it,” he said. “It’s an addictive sport. The second you do it once, you want to do it again. And keep on going.”

Gonzales and his wife, Sydney Gonzales, were hooked and wanted to take it farther.

“We have entrepreneurial minds so we’re going to go off on our own and do something big and try and push the sport in New Mexico,” he said.

It just seemed like a good way to help promote sport here, she said.

“We mentioned the idea back and forth a couple of times, but we weren’t really certain,” Sydney Gonzales said of forming a business to produce shows. “We compete quite a bit out of state. We like the format and we like the bigger shows, having more people, so we wanted to do one ourselves.”

That was last year and it seemed to work.

“We weren’t sure how much of a following there actually was here,” she said. “There wasn’t a whole lot of events and not much competition, We weren’t really sure it would have the response we wanted. We took the chance because we wanted to be able to ride and compete more without having to travel so much.”

That first event last year, however, went so well that the couple decided this was something they wanted to do more frequently, and after the first Socorro event in the late spring, they wanted to put on regular events at the complex.

“It went fantastic,” Amador Gonzales said. “It was a fun show. The staff at the rodeo grounds was incredible. Tons of help. They made it pleasant and the facility is awesome. It’s hard to beat the facility and they do a really good job out there.”

So what exactly is ranch sorting? Well, spectators are free, the Gonzaleses said, so that’s the best way to get involved.

While it’s akin to rodeo in that livestock are involved and ranch skills are needed, its nature makes it hard to incorporate into a traditional rodeo format, Amador Gonzales said.

“Rodeo is huge here in New Mexico,” he said. “But this is not really a rodeo event. It takes a little longer. It kind of has to be its own event so it doesn’t add well to existing rodeos.”

Pairs of riders are tasked with moving cows, which are numbered from 0 to nine from one pen to another in order, starting with the number that is computer-generated and announced at the start of each ride. The riders have 60 seconds to move as many cows over as possible, but doing so out of order results in a busted ride.

“It turns into a high energy event and it’s a lot of fun,” Sydney Gonzales said. “Everybody (spectators) gets to be a part of it, because they’re calling out numbers and pointing to where the cows are trying to help.”

It can get kind of frenetic, Amador Gonzales said.

“It is crazy,” he said. “Sometimes it just seems like chaos.”

And once they formed Bar-Heart-Bar and started producing events, they discovered a whole community of riders who enjoyed the sport.

“It’s been awesome,” Sydney Gonzales said. “We’ve had a lot of people from out of state start to come and join us. A lot of people from down south in New Mexico; Roswell and Capitan. People that we didn’t know and they’ve called and messaged and it’s really been awesome so we’re able to grow the sport and gain a lot of awareness.”

They have been particularly trying to attract young riders to the sport.

“That’s helped a lot. We have a youth class and they all get buckles and they all really enjoy that,” she said. “That’s been one of the best things about it, seeing the kids develop. Seeing the progress they’ve made to this point is really cool.”