ProRodeo Sports News - April 26, 2024

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World Champion Bareback Rider Tim O’Connell sidelined

BY THE NUMBERS $11K The amount of money ($11,784) earned by Roscoe Jarboe in winning the Clovis (Calif.) Rodeo Division 1 Xtreme Bulls event on April 24. The win and payday vaulted Jarboe to the top spot in the Xtreme Bulls Tour standings. $12K The amount of money ($12,500) earned by bull rider Hayes Weight for his 90.5-point ride on Pete Carr Pro Rodeo’s Time Bomb to win the San Angelo Cinch-Chute April 20 at the Foster Communications Coliseum. He was the only cowboy to make the whistle in the three-man finals. $130K The amount of money ($130,119) earned by the champions of the Playoff Series San Angelo (Texas) Rodeo. The list consists of bareback rider Cooper Cooke ($17,070); co-champion steer wrestlers Matt Reeves ($10,154) and Cole Walker ($16,547); team ropers Shay Dixon Carroll/Jace Helton ($9,692); saddle bronc riders Sage Newman ($12,966) and Tanner Butner ($8,110); tie-down roper Dylan Hancock ($12,472); barrel racer Wenda Johnson ($20,983); breakaway roper Brooke Eddy ($9,908) and bull rider Scott Wells ($12,217).

Three-time PRCA World Champion Bareback Rider Tim O’Connell’s 2024 season is officially over before it ever began. O’Connell, who won consecutive world championships from 2016-18, had not competed since the conclusion of the 2023 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo on Dec. 16, while recovering from a tear in his left groin. O’Connell planned to come back this season, but those plans changed abruptly when he got on his first practice horse since his injury over Easter weekend at the end of March. “It was my first horse I got on and it pulled (the left groin) all apart,” said O’Connell, 32. “That was a horse you would put a beginner on. I have to have the same surgery done again. We are still working on a date to do that. I was cleared by three weeks before I got on a horse, and I was just making sure everything else was ready as well. I felt good. I felt healthy. Everything that they asked me to do as far as (physical therapy) I did, and I had a lot of faith that everything was going to go according to plan and it just didn’t.” Now, O’Connell is making a new plan. “We are trying to figure out, No. 1 ‘Why it all came apart so easily?’ and No. 2, instead of trying it again in another 12 weeks because I would still have some rodeo season left, there’s really no point. I’m going to let it sit four to six months and make sure it is really stuck and if we’re going to sit that long, I’m just going to have my ACL fixed on my right knee as well. I hurt that knee in 2017. I haven’t had an ACL in my right knee since Cheyenne of 2017.” The ultra-competitive O’Connell doesn’t want to miss the season, but he knows that’s his best alternative at this point in his career. “I’m going to come back in 2025 fully healthy for the first time in six or seven years,” O’Connell said. “This is a setback, but I’m not done by any means. The injury bug has definitely been a factor for me over the last five years. This is a mean game that we play, and it is physically demanding and sometimes there’s

a domino effect. “I have not had a break since I started making the NFR in 2014, and I made 10 straight Finals. I never really had a recovery time at all. My mentality is that I pushed through a lot of stuff but where I want to be at the end of the year has not been a factor since 2018. This is God’s timing to take the time and be with my family and get fully healed up and rejuvenate my hunger for this game and comeback fully healthy in 2025 ready to compete and go after a world title.” O’Connell, and his wife, Sami, and their two boys, Hazen, 6, and Stratten, 2, live in Cascade, Iowa. “The positives of missing the season outweigh the negatives by so much more,” O’Connell said. “This groin has been the most frustrating injury I have ever dealt with.” O’Connell said he initially suffered the groin injury in January of 2023 at the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo in Denver. O’Connell, a 10-time Wrangler NFR qualifier (2014-23), finished ninth in last year’s PRCA | RAM World Standings with $214,891. PRCA ProRodeo file photo Tim O’Connell, shown competing at the 2023 Wran gler NFR, will miss the remainder of the 2024 season after reinjuring his groin in late March.

ProRodeo Sports News 4/26/2024

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