After his steer struggled in the chute, J.D. Struxness made a solid, 4.4-second run to finish sixth during Thursday’s eighth round of the National Finals Rodeo.
(PRCA PHOTO BY LARA ST JACQUES)
LAS VEGAS – Steer wrestler J.D. Struxness wanted to finish higher.
He needed to finish higher. But that wasn’t in the cards during Thursday’s eighth round of the National Finals Rodeo, where he knocked his steer down in 4.4 seconds to finish sixth, worth $5,914. Any paychecks are important in rodeo, especially in Las Vegas.
Struxness is fifth in the world standings with $212,545 but trails the leader, Tucker Allen, by more than $86,000 heading into the final two nights of ProRodeo’s grand finale. Some things need to happen if Struxness hopes to defend his world championship this season.
“There’s still about $72,000 on the table, and then you can look at the average checks after that,” he said, referring to go-round winners earning better than $36,000 per night. “We’re just picking away at it.
“I liked our steer a little better tonight. He just fought the chute a little bit there, and then tried on after that. It just makes it hard here, because the starts are so fast. When those steers fight the chute, it gets tough, and you try to squeeze off and time the start that you have to have out here.”
The Thomas & Mack Center is a fast setup for the timed events. Even stopping the clock in 4.4, he was a half-second off the pace set by Allen, who won his third round Thursday. Everything needs to come together to make a blistering run, and it didn’t for Struxness.
“I was hoping to get a better start and be faster on him, but we took a check home tonight, so we’ll take getting by one and see what we have tomorrow,” he said.
Allen leads the average race with an eight-run cumulative time of 36.6 seconds. He is almost 10 seconds faster than the No. 2 man, Rowdy Parrott, and has a 16.3-second advantage over Struxness. When winning runs take close to 4 seconds, that’s an eternity.
The average champion will pocket $94,000, but third place still pays more than $62,000. If circumstances change and Struxness can make up ground on Parrott over the final two nights of the season, a second-place average check is more than $76,000.
“We’ve climbed back up in the average and are sitting good to get a check out of that,” said Struxness, a seven-time NFR qualifier from Milan, Minnesota. “We’re going to go gather up as much money as we can, and then we’ll just see where the cards fall after that. We just have to see what other guys do, and all we can do is just try to gather up what we can.
“At the end of the day, we come out here to make money. We need to look at it going into these last two rounds, then go ahead and finish strong and take home as much money as we can to feed the family.”
Struxness has earned nearly $74,000 over eight nights in Sin City, and he has a shot to more than double it in the final two days of the season. That would buy a lot of groceries.