Zoey Tunks of King City beat the heat Friday with a 2.6 on the breakaway roping. If the name sounds familiar, she was a standout basketball player for King City. It seems that basketball and rodeo skills are somehow related, as Skyler and Kynder Florea of Northeast Nodaway and Colbi and Chyles Webb of Gilman City are also good at both. In the barrel racing, Brylea Paxson was fourth with a time of 16.399. She was off a trip to a national event where she was in the top 20%; she was also in the top eight in Iowa barrel racing.
There were some changes in the ring this year as Seth the Clown graduated to the announcer's stand and Jeremy Muntz became the rodeo clown and Seth's sidekick. Jeremy had to do double duty as the regular bullfighter was tossed in the air and had to come out; Jeremy had to come out of his huge plastic barrel and fight the bulls.
Seth retained the same sense of humor in trying to get everyone enthusiastic about the rodeo. "This ain't no opera, it's a rodeo,' he said at one point. At one point, he told Jeremy to simmer down. "You seem surly today," he said.
Jeremy had his own act planned out. He picked out a lady in the stands playing with her cell phone during the breakaway roping and tried to borrow it, only for it to not work because it runs on facial recognition technology.
The ranch bronc riding had a couple of thrills; one horse, Peppercorn, couldn't get its rider off even though it banged its head in the mud floor. Another horse bucked so hard, it not only capsized the cowboy off, the saddle came off and the horse landed on the cowboy's shoulder.
One event that the contestants had trouble with was the tiedown calf roping; one old cowboy apparently had his calf roped, only for it to thrash around and struggle out.
Two County Dusters entertained everyone with a tribute to America by showing various equestrian patterns by a team of 16 riders from around Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska.
During the team roping, there was a noise contest between the south side and the north side with the south side winning. Only one team could complete the team roping despite someone in the crowd calling for a rerun.
The Beauty Machine from last year made its reappearance while everyone was getting ready for the barrels, guaranteed to make the user a billionaire by making everyone who entered it beautiful. But Jeremy didn't have any better luck than Seth did last year; he didn't realize that the catch was that the tech support was Italian and the machine turned the "girl" into a dog if not operated correctly.
Darren Martin saved the best for last, when he successfully rode a bull. The judges couldn't agree on the score, with one scoring it a 22 and the other scoring it a 34 for a total of 56. The bull stopped before the whistle, meaning it was a union bull, according to the clown who worked the 1984 version of the Sheridan Rodeo back when Gary Hawk lived in the two story house east of Sheridan and the Rodeo Arena was where MFA Oil is today.
The Back 40, in its second night of operation, had double or triple the crowds of Thursday night; there were even people in the restaurant section after 9 pm. The place was air conditioned, making it a perfect place to beat the heat.
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