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Still in the Saddle: USA Kokpar Team and the ‘Cowboy Ethic’ [1]
['Anya Petrone Slepyan', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2024-11-22
Editor’s Note: This is a second installment of a series about the 5th World Nomad Games that took place in Astana, Kazakhstan, earlier this year. The celebrations of nomadic cultures, their skills, crafts, arts, and traditions welcomed participants from all over the world, including the United States.
In Part II, Anya Petrone Slepyan follows the USA Kokpar team as they navigate the tournament with the odds stacked against them. But the “motley crew” that makes up the U.S. team isn’t there for easy wins or glory. They have discovered a strand of heritage shared between them and the peoples of Central Asia that keeps them coming back to play the ancient and brutal game of Kopkar.
Watch the mini-documentary the Daily Yonder produced about the American cowboys who traveled to Kazakhstan to participate in the 2024 World Nomad Games.
“Put the whip in your mouth, that way you don’t break your teeth,” co-captain Scott Zimmerman advised Wyatt Mortenson, the newest member of the USA Kokpar team.
With the thick rubber whip now firmly wedged between his teeth, Mortenson returned to the task at hand: trying to scoop up a 60-pound goat-shaped rubber dummy from the ground while staying on his moving horse.
While this isn’t a skill most people need to have, it’s central to playing kokpar (pronounced ‘coke-par’), the national sport of Kazakhstan. The game originates from a Central Asian folk tradition that dates back some 3,000 years. But in the past decade, a new group of players has emerged from an unlikely geography: horsemen from the American West.
Mortenson, Zimmerman, and their team of American cowboys had flown over 6,000 miles to Astana, the recently-built capital city of Kazakhstan, to take part in the 5th World Nomad Games. The event featured around 3,000 athletes from 89 countries participating in 21 different Central Asian ethno-sports: sports based on the traditional folk games of historically nomadic peoples. These included horse wrestling, hunting with eagles and falcons, archery, and tug-of-war. The competition took place in arenas and sports complexes scattered around the city, with more than 100,000 foreigners and many more local spectators cheering on the competitors.
While other Americans competed in traditional archery and asyk atu – a strategy game played by tossing sheep’s knucklebones – the most popular sports were kokpar and its Kyrgyz counterpart, kok boru, which the cowboys had come to play.
Though each member of the team had to travel across at least 11 time zones to compete, they have plenty in common with those descended from the nomadic cultures of Central Asia, said Will Grant, a journalist and member of the USA Kokpar team who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“The idea of seeing the horizon between the ears of a horse is pretty intrinsic to the cowboy culture and certainly the nomadic heritage of Central Asia,” Grant said. “The idea of the horse and the freedom to move across the boundless steppe, this is the nomadic way. And for a lot of us, our cowboy ideology is metaphorically the same.”
Immediately recognizable in their blue and white ‘USA Kokpar Team’ jackets and wide-brimmed hats, the team attracted continuous attention as they wove their way through the yurts, food stalls, and crafts market that made up the cultural displays of the World Nomad Games’ “ethno-village.” Hundreds of people asked to have their pictures taken with the players throughout the games, often donning the cowboys’ hats themselves for the full effect.
Co-captains Ladd Howell and Scott Zimmerman posed for photos with spectators at the 5th World Nomad Games. (Still from video by Owen Halsta/Otter House Productions)
“The thing about the cowboy hat is that it suggests an identity and a lifestyle and an ideology,” Grant said. “And so [Central Asians] see this, and it’s relatable. It has to do with the land, with domestic animals, and a value in the pastoral way of life. These are the roots of these people, and the cowboy speaks directly to that.”
No member of the American kok par or kok boru team makes a living as a cowboy, and some of the players even prefer to wear baseball caps in their daily lives. But the cowboy identity is an important unifyer among the players.
The mission statement of the USA Nomadic Sports Federation, the non-profit that organizes the team, includes this clause: “The corporation is created to…serve as global ambassadors for the values of the American West, commonly known as Cowboy Ethic.”
According to Zimmerman, these values are central to recruiting players –which is done through word of mouth– and their cohesion as a team.
“It’s not just finding guys who will say yes. It’s finding men who fit those molds, who are a good person and a good representative of themselves, of their family, of their country,” Zimmerman said. “You’ve got to be a real cowboy inside and out or none of this would work.”
How the Game Is Played
Kokpar and kok boru are most simplistically described as rugby on horseback with a 60-pound headless goat as the ball.
Though the essence of the two games is the same, they have adopted slightly different rules. Most notably, the Kazakhstani game of kokpar uses a rubber dummy, while Kyrgyz kok boru is played with a real headless goat.
Four players from each team mount their horses and take to the 100-meter field. At the referee’s signal, they race to the goat in the middle of the field, leaning out of their saddles to pick it up from the ground. Other players try to block them from picking up the goat, resulting in a scrum of eight horses and riders pushing against each other. Once a player has hold of the goat, they tuck it under their leg and race toward the other team’s goal, located at either end of the field like a football end zone, while the other team tries to block them or pull their horse off-course.
In kokpar, the goal is a painted circle on the ground, while kok boru is played with a “tai kazan,” a basin roughly the size and shape of a large hot tub. The team with the most goals at the end of the game (three 15-minute periods in kok boru, two 20-minute halves in kok par) wins.
And in kok boru, the winning team gets to eat the now thoroughly tenderized meat in a celebratory feast.
The games originated thousands of years ago, when the herders of Central Asia would kill wolves that threatened their livestock and play keep-away with the body. But from this folk tradition, kokpar and kok boru have been formalized into national sports, with professional leagues, celebrity players, and national and international competitions.
Of course, American participation in kokpar and kok boru has a much shorter history. The first American team played kok boru in the 2016 World Nomad Games with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Kyrgyzstan and Vista 360 program, which seeks to strengthen mountain communities around the world through cultural exchanges. Since then, American players have flown across the world half a dozen times to compete in a sport that simply doesn’t exist – on either an amateur or professional level – in the United States.
Scott Zimmerman, who owns a property management business in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, was one of the original players in 2016. He first heard about the sport from his brother-in-law, who had traveled to Kyrgyzstan with the Vista 360 program. When he was asked to join the team in 2016, he didn’t hesitate.
“Having heard the stories of Kyrgyzstan, I immediately was like, yes, I want to play,” Zimmerman said. “And I think I called him back a minute later and was asking, ‘how do you spell that? What are we doing? Is it really as dangerous as it looks?’”
Eight years later, what started as a whim has become one of the defining features of his life.
“I think it was what I was supposed to do,” he said. “We all have certain reasons for being where we are and when we’re there. To get to play these important games to the people of Central Asia was one of the callings I was given.”
When Americans first participated in the games, it was treated almost as a sideshow by all involved, according to Zimmerman. But as he and the other players have continued to take part, the 3,000 year old tradition has become a part of his “heart and soul,” Zimmerman said.
“It’s an honor to have been to so many World Nomad Games and have met people of different backgrounds who take pride in what they do, knowing it’s not soccer or swimming or all these well-known Olympic events that we’ll put on TV for days on end,” Zimmerman said. “These are games that have been played for just as long as the Greeks played theirs.”
Zimmerman isn’t the only player who feels a spiritual connection to the game. Co-captain Ladd Howell, who competes as a calf roper in rodeos and works for a landscaping company in Syracuse, Utah, sees the game as directly tied to his mission as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He served a two-year mission in St. Petersburg, Russia, and later went back to Russia to work on cattle ranches. This experience, along with his aptitude for the game itself, makes him an invaluable member of the team.
“When we’re out there on the field and the referee is yelling at us, no one knows what he’s saying except for Ladd. That’s an important role,” Grant said.
Howell was first drawn to the game because of his rodeo background and interest in the Russian-speaking world. But playing the game, he has also connected it with his faith.
“I see it as a very biblical game,” he said. “The goat is a sacrificed animal, and they’re throwing it into this goal which is not far off from the size of an Old Testament altar.”
Several other team members are also Mormons, while others practice no formal religion. And though they are referred to uniformly as ‘the American cowboys’ in their many media appearances, the team represents a diverse range of geographies and backgrounds across the West.
The other American players include a former mixed martial arts fighter from Ventura, California, a Christian minister in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a ferrier from Enterprise, Utah, an insurance claims specialist from Las Vegas, Nevada, a ranch hand from Spring Branch, Texas, and a stunt rider from Santa Fe, New Mexico. The team also traveled with Hayden Hilke, a physical therapist from Jackson, Wyoming.
“We’re a pretty motley crew,” Grant said. “It’s difficult to connect the dots between us except for to say we love traveling to Central Asia, we’re willing to put our lives on the line for a game nobody in America knows about or cares about, and that we like to do fun things on horseback.”
Ruthless Competition
The Americans played their first game of kok boru against the Kazakhstani national team on the second day of the World Nomad Games. The stands were half empty – they would be overflowing with flag-waving spectators for the finals, where rival nations Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would inevitably meet, but relatively few fans had shown up for the Kazakhs’ opening game against the Americans. A smattering of Americans waved flags in the crowd, but they didn’t have much hope for how the game would go.
For forty-five minutes, the Kazakhstani team ruthlessly and efficiently routed the Americans, with a final score of 18-0. Throughout the game, the Kazakhs had consistently blocked the American players from even getting a hand on the dummy goat, never mind scoring.
“They were trying to send us all home in ambulances. It was a rough game, super physical,” said Will Grant, who injured his arm shortly before the Games and acted as team manager throughout the competition. “There wasn’t a lot of sportsmanship in that, but that’s fine. We didn’t come here to have anyone hold our hand.”
Scott Zimmerman fell off his horse after trying to steal the dummy goat, and was dragged several yards. Severe injuries are always a concern when playing kokpar and kok boru. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan/The Daily Yonder).
Playing against the home team is always difficult. But the inherent mismatch between the Americans and the Kazakhs goes far deeper than that.
The Kazakhstani national team is made up of professional athletes who trained together for months prior to the Games. And though the American competitors are skilled horsemen, they have little opportunity to practice the game, or anything like it. One of the players, Nick Willert, went viral on Instagram after posting a video of himself training by lifting a kettlebell from the back of a makeshift wooden bench.
“We’re the amateurs. We don’t own the gear,” Grant said. “There’s nowhere in the U.S. that you can buy a kok boru saddle, they don’t make them over there. You don’t see anybody wearing these kinds of boots in the United States. This is certainly a Central Asian game.”
“We are literally a high school basketball team playing against the Lakers,” said Howell.
But even the most imbalanced basketball game would seem tame next to kokpar and kok boru, which are full-contact sports played at high speeds on aggressive horses.
“You can’t replicate the feeling of when the horses come together in the scrum because it’s like having your leg between two Toyota Camrys in a motor vehicle accident,” Grant said. “They come together so hard they feel like they’re made out of cement.”
At the end of a game, Kanton Vause dismounted from his horse to walk in a slow, painful circle. But despite being only 28 years old, he moved like a man more than twice his age, who had also spent an uncomfortable night on a cement floor. But it’s all a part of the game, according to Grant.
“If the insides of your legs aren’t black and blue, then one, your stirrups aren’t short enough, and two, you haven’t been in the action,” he said. “Of course you’re going to walk a little funny when you get off.”
If anything, Vause was starting to walk like a true kok boru player.
“Some of these Kyrgyz kok boru players, I mean, you could drive a Volkswagen between their legs,” Grant said. “These are some bow-legged guys.”
Bruises and a widened gait are one thing, but the looming risk for more serious injuries is another. In the first match, Zimmerman fell off his horse while trying to steal the goat from a Kazakh player, and was dragged several yards before he could kick his foot out of the stirrup. A fall in the middle of a scrum, where eight horses collide and circle one another, could be deadly.
The violence of the game – whips cracking, horses kicking, players swearing – can be shocking to watch. Many of the players have partners who are less than thrilled about their participation on the team, and for good reason. Wearing limited protective gear – shinguards, boots, and a helmet made of felt and fur – the players have little protection if the worst should happen. But according to Grant, this intensity is what makes playing such a rich experience.
“It’s so immersive. You can’t really dabble in kok boru, you can’t go out there and go half speed,” Grant explained. “So you have so much at stake personally that the trade-off is remarkable. It gives you something you can’t get anywhere else in life.”
Finding Brotherhood
In their second game of the tournament, the Americans drew a different Kazakhstani team. Wearing sky-blue jerseys and bright smiles, this Kazakh team offered an olive branch. There was no hope that the Americans would beat the Kazakhs in their national sport, but this match felt different from the first.
“It was more like, ‘we’re going to beat you, but we’re going to help you guys play the game,’” Grant said. “They were actually handing us the goat and helping us to successfully execute some of the maneuvers that are necessary to scoring, defending, playing the game.”
The final score was twelve to four.
Over the years, the American team has developed a friendly relationship with Kyrgyz players, who first hosted them in 2016 and still lend the team horses for competition. This includes professional kok boru player and referee Nurgazy Borbiev, who acted as the U.S. team coach during the 5th World Nomad Games.
For Howell, these relationships are part of what motivates him to make the trip, which can require as much as two full days of travel time.
“Every time we come back, we get to see our friends from over here,” Howell said. “We keep in such good touch with the coaches and players in Kyrgyzstan, they’ve seriously become our brothers.”
But not every part of this cultural exchange is easy. The team members are often asked if they will bring kokpar and kok boru to America.
“Our answer is, if we do, it’s going to look a hell of a lot different,” Grant said.
The biggest concern is the treatment of the horses during the game. Players use whips made out of thick tire rubber, and the horses, stallions who are trained to be aggressive, are made to batter into each other. After a game, it is not uncommon to see horses bleeding from their mouths, or from cuts and scrapes on their bodies.
A Turkish player whips his horse during a one-on-one penalty. Some critics of the sport are concerned with the rough treatment of the horses during the games. (Still from video by Owen Halstad/Otter House Productions)
For Grant, who has always lived around horses, their harsh treatment is a continual source of discomfort even as he cherishes the sport. To cope with this dissonance, he remembers a lesson from his mentor, a horse trainer who died at the age of 100.
“He told me, ‘you can’t train every horse in the world. You can’t harbor this frustration,’” Grant said. “If you travel enough, you’re going to see people handling horses in ways that don’t align with how you believe horses should be handled.”
Zimmerman sees this dilemma as a matter of cultural respect.
“Just because we don’t understand or agree with someone’s culture doesn’t mean that we can say it’s not okay,” Zimmerman said. “If we don’t get along and we’re not willing to play together, it will make a world that I don’t want my children to live in. I don’t want my children to believe that any culture is less than because what they do, we don’t find normal or acceptable.”
Unbreakable Bonds and Respect for Tradition
A few hours after their second game against the Kazakhs, the Americans lined up for their third game of the tournament. This time, their opponents wore the royal purple jerseys of the Turkish national team. Though Turkey is geographically closer to Central Asia, the Turkish team was a better match in skill to the Americans than to the Kazakhs or Kyrgyz.
After being trounced in their previous matches, both teams were out for blood, and sure that this was a game they could win. If the US national team won, it would mark the first ever victory with a fully American team. But it wouldn’t be easy.
“When we lost 18 to 0, we were out there floundering, playing against the best in the world, it’s hard and it’s demoralizing, but it’s not as hard as playing against the Turks who are closer to our level,” Grant said.
The Americans took an early lead thanks to a goal by Howell. But the score was one to one at the end of the final period, sending the match into a sudden-death overtime.
After ten more minutes of brutal play with neither team scoring, the referees explained the game would go to a shootout, the first time that has happened in the World Nomad Games.
In the shootout, known as “bullet,” one player begins carrying the goat, with a player from the opposing team ten meters behind them. At the drop of a flag, both players race to the goal, where the goat-holder has one chance to score against the defending player.
Wyatt Mortenson competes in a shoot-out against Turkey. The U.S. lost to Turkey by one point in the shootout, missing their chance to win their first game in international competition. (Still from video by Owen Halstad/Otter House Productions)
The Turkish team scored once in bullet, and the Americans were unable to match them. The game ended with a Turkish victory, two to one.
It was a tough loss for the American team.
“I could see the defeat in some of the guy’s eyes. And that hurt to see, as one of the leaders of the team,” Zimmerman said. “I tried to remind them how hard we all worked, how we competed until the end, and that we’re the lucky ones to even get to play and represent our country the best that we could.”
But despite his role in keeping the team positive, Zimmerman, who is in his mid-40s and a father of four, struggled with the knowledge that he might not compete again.
“It’s hard knowing that maybe this is it, and maybe I won’t be able to come back again as a player,” he said. “Chasing this dream and leaving my family this many times, it’s hard to imagine that I’ll continue to do that.”
With around half the players in their 40s and 50s, finding new – and younger – blood is critical for a future U.S. National team. But older players like Grant and Willert aren’t done yet.
“Until we know that it’s clinically clear we can’t do this anymore, I think we’re all going to keep knocking on the door,” Grant said. “There’s got to be an old man’s league, right?”
While the players’ love for the sport is undeniable, the camaraderie of the team perhaps best explains why competing is such a powerful experience.
“This brings us together,” Grant said. “We have this common ground, a shared experience that is really profound for us. And you don’t have to tell anybody about it because they’re not going to understand, but for us this is real.”
Zimmerman agrees. “The bonds that I’ve built with the men I’ve traveled with will not be broken,” he said. “They are some of my best friends, and I didn’t meet them until very late in life.”
But he also believes his team has importance beyond what the players, and the game, mean to each other.
“That we’re willing to travel this far and play games that Americans have never partaken in shows respect for the Kazakh culture, the Kyrgyz culture, Central Asian traditions,” Zimmerman said. “And that [respect] is how we’ll make this world a better place.”
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