Schaumburg native rodeo's top writer
How did a kid from Schaumburg ever get to be a two-time Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Writer of the Year?
How Joe Kusek got into journalism is easy enough to explain. He made enough of an impression on a teacher while a freshman at Harper Community College that she recommended him to the Daily Herald's legendary sports editor Bob Frisk, and he worked here as a stringer part-time for five years in the late '70s and early '80s. After graduating from Harper and Northern Illinois University, Kusek hooked on with the Crystal Lake Herald, only to get laid off. He was coaching volleyball at St. Edwards High School in Elgin in 1986 when, in the itinerant newspaper business, he landed an interview and then a job as sports editor in Clovis, N.M.
On arrival, the editor-in-chief told him, "You've got two things to cover this weekend." The first was a local basketball tournament.
"That's not a problem," Kusek said. The second was a professional rodeo.
"And I said, 'We've got a problem,'" Kusek recalled on the phone from his home in Billings, Mont.
The problem, however, was all his. "I didn't know rodeo language," Kusek said. "I didn't know the events." Yet it was learn or get tossed from another job. So he sat down for three hours in a furniture store with Bob Tallman, who also happened to be one of the famous rodeo announcers. "He schooled me pretty well," Kusek added.
Well enough that a year and a half later, when he saw a job listed in a trade publication to be a sports writer at the Billings Gazette, he dropped any last thoughts of becoming a high-school coach and landed the gig, in part because it involved rodeo writing.
"In Montana, obviously, we don't have any professional sports," Kusek said. "We have a lot of college sports. High schools are real big. But rodeo athletes are our pro athletes. They're big and they're famous. And this newspaper has made a big commitment to cover rodeo. ... It's pretty high-profile.
"I came up here to be a sports writer, and rodeo was open," Kusek added, "so I just kind of slid into it."
Slid into it and excelled at it, the thing is. "You just get to know these people," Kusek said. "It's a real sweet culture. When you meet a cowboy or a cowgirl and they tell you, 'Hey, if you're in the area, swing by the place,' they actually mean it. I've been to their weddings. I've been to the ranches. I call so many of them friends."
In that, he was simply cultivating sources the way Frisk had taught him to. "I learned so much from him," Kusek said.
The straightforward, friendly approach paid dividends on the rodeo circuit, where Kusek has attended the national finals each year since 1991. In 1999, he became the first person named Writer of the Year by the PRCA, beating out reporters at four "cowboy-culture papers" with bigger circulations. "I was pretty shocked to be in that company," Kusek said. A decade later, he repeated the honor just last year.
His mother and one of his brothers still live in Schaumburg, and he has other family scattered in the suburbs. He makes it back every couple of years.
"I had offers to come back to the Midwest, for different papers, and I even thought about talking to Bob to see if anything opened," Kusek said, "but my wife is from here. It's one of those deals where you get to a place and you're like, 'Oh, I've got roots down in the cellar. What happened with that?' I really like it here. It's a great place to live. When it was 22 below last Wednesday, it wasn't too hot, but what are you going to do?"
Besides, there's still one thing missing, Kusek admitted, as he looked back on his career covering rodeos. "I would show up in shorts and a tank top," he recalled, "and there was a stretch when I had hair down to my shoulders, and the cowboys I would get to know would say, 'We gotta get you a pair of boots.' And now I've got the boots. I've got the shirt and the jeans and the boots. But I don't have the hat, I don't have the cowboy hat yet."
That, it seems, would put the cap on his career as a rodeo writer.