Fifteen-year-old Joey Burkett wonders if he will ever be successful at anything. He always thought he would grow up to be a rodeo performer as his father, a world champion cowboy, had been, but Daddy died in a rodeo accident. When he grew to six feet tall in the eighth grade, he thought he might be a basketball player, but that would mean college, and he is failing math. Joey hopes that whatever his future, his new peer tutor, Julie Hernandez, who he really admires, will be a part of it, and that Matthew Kane, the new man in his mother's life, will not. When Joey quarrels with Julie and becomes upset at his mother's going out with Matt, he goes along with a friend to borrow an expensive sports car. In an attempt to see how fast it would go, they wreck the car. Joey thinks he is headed to Juvenile Detention, but Matt Kane comes up with a plan for Joey to work on his ranch and raise beef calves for the summer to earn money to pay for the damages.. Joey hates ranch work and considers runn