By Cara Cowan Watts, Cherokee411.com
VINITA, Okla. His name means “boy of the woods” in Cherokee. As a rookie, TeeSquantee “Tee” Woolman won a World Championship team roping alongside Leo Camarillo, one of only five cowboys in rodeo history to earn a world title in their very first year as a pro.
Born December 4, 1956, in Vinita, Oklahoma, Woolman grew up with a rope in his hands almost from the time he could walk. His mother remembered him carrying a stick horse everywhere he went as a toddler. He is half Cherokee and half Irish, and his given name, TeeSquantee, honors a distant relative, TeeSquantee Ballard, described in rodeo hall of fame records as a Chief of the Cherokees. Woolman started competing professionally after watching other ropers make an actual living at it and decided he wanted the same thing.
In 1980, he broke into the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) and did something almost nobody manages: he won PRCA Rookie of the Year and the World Championship in team roping in the same season, heading for the legendary Leo Camarillo. He won it again in 1982, edging out Camarillo himself by a razor-thin margin in one of the closest title races in the event’s history. A third World Championship came in 1991, heading for Bobby Harris, with the two partners finishing the season in a tight points race.
Then he just kept showing up. Twenty-six trips to the National Finals Rodeo in team roping and 19 more at the National Finals Steer Roping, a combined 45 to 46 total National Finals qualifications across his career depending on the source, a mark among the most in the sport’s history. He won the NFR team roping average a record five times, partnering across the years with some of the greatest ropers who ever lived: Leo Camarillo, Clay O’Brien Cooper, Bobby Harris, Monty Joe and Cory Petska, Martin Lucero, and Rich Skelton, before Skelton went on to team up with Speed Williams and win eight straight world titles of his own.
Woolman became one of the first cowboys to reach the $2 million earnings club, and among the first to get there primarily through team roping. He also won the National Finals Steer Roping average in 1998, was PRCA Texas Circuit All-Around Champion in 1996, and won the Texas Circuit team roping title six times. His homegrown horse, Megazord, was named the PRCA/AQHA Head Horse of the Year in 2004, the same year Woolman won his fifth and final NFR average title, roping alongside Cory Petska.
Woolman was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs on Aug. 14, 2004. “It’s a big privilege and honor to be in there,” Woolman said at the time. “There are a lot of great cowboys and people in the Hall. And while you are still active makes it better.”
He was inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s National Rodeo Hall of Fame on Nov. 12, 2022, alongside fellow team roper Gary Gist. “I want to give the good Lord above all the credit for this,” Woolman said at the induction in Oklahoma City. “And my partners — Leo (Camarillo), Rich (Skelton), Bob (Harris), Clay O (Cooper), Martin (Lucero), Monty Joe and Cory (Petska) — deserve this more than anyone.”
He spent 38 years running his own horse training operation out of Llano, Texas, before relocating to manage a new arena facility outside Stephenville.
A rookie who won it all his first year out. Three World Championships and a career that produced champions of its own long after his prime. Nearly half a century in the sport, and still not done.
That is Tee Woolman, a Cherokee Nation citizen.
Wado.
Cherokee 411, 1827 W Reno St., Broken Arrow, OK 74012. Phone: (918) 401-0370. Email: [email protected].
Sources
True Rodeo Nation, Facebook post profiling Tee Woolman’s career (2026) — https://www.facebook.com/
ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy — Tee Woolman inductee profile — https://www.
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum — National Rodeo Hall of Fame, Tee Woolman inductee profile — https://nationalcowboymuseum.
Texas Rodeo Hall of Fame — TeeSquantee Claude Woolman profile — https://www.
Texas Rodeo Cowboy Hall of Fame — Woolman, Tee inductee profile — https://texasrodeocowboy.com/
Cherokee Phoenix — “Woolman inducted into ProRodeo Hall of Fame” (Sept. 3, 2004) — https://www.cherokeephoenix.
Team Roping Journal — “Team Ropers Tee Woolman and Gary Gist Inducted into National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum” (Nov. 17, 2022) — https://teamropingjournal.com/
Team Roping Journal — “Native American Cowboys: Jackson Sundown, Tee Woolman and Doyle Lee” — https://teamropingjournal.com/
Wikipedia — Rich Skelton (team roping partner background) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
