ProRodeo Sports News - Dec. 20, 2019

SADDLE BRONC AVERAGE WINNER

Brody Cress won the saddle bronc riding average with 840.5 points on 10 head. PRCA ProRodeo photo by Clay Guardipee

Four on the Floor

Cress rides fourth place to first in aggregate

BY SCOTT KANIEWSKI B rody Cress made the most of his third trip to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. It was a continuation of a second-half hot streak that never waned for the Hillsdale, Wyo., native. Cress was the only saddle bronc rider to cover all 10 horses at the 2019Wrangler NFR, winning the average with a score of 840.5 points on 10. The victory earned Cress $67,269. Coupled with eight fourth-place finishes and a win in Round 10, Cress took home $180,500 from Las Vegas. It was a similar path of consistency that helped the Wyoming native get to the Wrangler NFR. As of June 3, Cress was barely inside the top 50 in the PRCA | RAMWorld Standings with $11,917. After back-to-back appearances at the Wrangler NFR debut, Cress had struggled to find his footing in the 2019 season. Then came the summer. Between June 3 and Sept. 30 (the final day of the regular season), Cress earned nearly $100,000. He won Cheyenne (Wyo.) Frontier Days for the third consecutive season, the first saddle bronc rider to accomplish that feat. He won the Gooding (Idaho) Pro Rodeo, the Horse Heaven/Kennewick (Wash.) Round-Up and the

Deadwood (S.D.) Days of ’76 Rodeo, to name a few. He jumped from 42nd in the world to ninth and booked his third consecutive trip to the Wrangler NFR.

“It’s outstanding to have stuff click this time of the year,” Cress said in July after winning in Cheyenne. “It gets the momentum going into the summer, and I’m having fun, too.” He could have been prophesying about his upcoming Wrangler NFR trip. Through the first eight rounds of the Finals, Cress made sure to ride to the whistle, placing or splitting fourth in all eight rounds. In Round 9, he finished out of the money, but he covered his horse. That put him in the driver’s seat for the average. Round 10 came along, and he drewThe Cervi Brothers’ RodeoHouston’s Womanizer, a horse that had bucked off J.J. Elshere in the fifth round, the horse’s first trip inside theThomas &Mack Center. Making the whistle wasn’t all Cress did aboardWomanizer. He went out and posted a 91-point ride to win the round and another $26,231. Between his success in the rounds and the average, Cress finished the 2019 season in second place in the world standings with $286,372.

ProRodeo Sports News 12/20/2019

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