Ruger Piva is heading to his first Wrangler NFR in December, but first he got tuned up by finishing second at Bulls in the Ballpark in Round Rock, Texas.
Piva was marked 90 points on Record Rack’s Viper, a previously unridden bull, to earn more than $8,000 toward the 2022 PRCA Bull Riding World Standings.
“I was honestly thinking about taking a break, just waiting for the (National) Finals, but I got a my callback and saw that bull had not been ridden and they’d marked him really high and I was like ‘I think I’d like to go be the first guy to ride him,’” he said. “He really fired out of there.....He did his job and I did my job.”
Piva also talked about his performance at the Pendleton Xtreme Bulls and how making the NFR made riding bulls fun again.
“The last two years at the end of the season, I was just putting way too much pressure on myself,” he said. “Sure got the monkey off my back.”