Chambers finished eighth in the regular-season standings with $81,178 in earnings, cracking the top 15 to clinch his first Wrangler NFR berth.
Patrick Everson
Freelance reporter
Patrick Everson covers sporting events as a freelance writer in Las Vegas.
Vezain was set for his sixth Wrangler NFR trip in the past seven years. But on the last weekend of the regular season, in late September, he suffered a broken back and had no feeling from the waist down.
Going into the final week of the PRCA’s regular season, in late September, there’s nothing more stomach-churning than being on the bubble.
At 22 years old, Roscoe Jarboe is already competing in his third Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. On its surface, the fact that Jarboe made it back to Las Vegas this year doesn’t seem surprising, since he qualified each of the past two years.
Each night of the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, 17,000 fans jam into the Thomas & Mack Center to take in all the action. But that represents only a fraction of those in town for this annual 10-day event.
At that point, it’s less dance with who brung ya’, and more like, “Do you want to go to prom with me?” as the single headers and heelers try to pair up.
Since the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo first moved to Las Vegas in 1985 – and even a couple of years before that – the Exceptional Rodeo has been a key component of the week.
Last year, the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo became a Sister Act in barrel racing. Steady Nellie Miller claimed the season-long world championship, holding off a red-hot Wrangler NFR run by Hailey Kinsel.
Here at the Wrangler NFR, kids were first treated to the Golden Circle of Champions Banquet at the South Point, where each child was paired with a contestant as a buddy.
Perhaps the best thing that ever happened to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo was event officials deciding it would be agood idea to make the nightly go-rounds available on a live TV feed to hotel properties all over Las Vegas.
Curtis Cassidy has been at this steer wrestling gig for 20 years on the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association tour, and surely years before that honing his craft as a kid.
Just as the Wrangler NFR has expanded to include ancillary events at all hours around town, so has it expanded with the daily main course at this buffet of rodeo.
Kids across the autism spectrum, some very young, some in their teens, get the opportunity to have a very different experience from their regular therapy sessions at Grant a Gift. And the world-class rodeo athletes can sense the importance of that experience.
Singletary, a country music star, unexpectedly died last February at the age of 47.
It’s been 11 years since Rhen Richard’s rookie debut competing in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. In the first 10 years, he’d never qualified for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
