JD Struxness took advantage of the three-round setup at Rodeo Austin and won the title with an aggregate time of 11.8 seconds on three.
He kickstarted his fourth Texas Swing stop by winning Round 1 with a 3.6-second run.
“It’s always great in an Average setup like that to come on with a good steer in the First Round and be able to take advantage of it for the Second (Round) and potentially the Short Round,” he said. “It gets your confidence rolling in that building.”
Struxness acknowledged the Round 1 win gave him a buffer heading into Round 2, he was also able to draw a steer out of the better end of the pen.
“You can’t take your foot off the gas in those situations, because it seems like when you do, that’s when mistakes happen or something off the wall will happen,” he said.
Struxness was the high call coming back for the Finals in Austin and had to wait out every other bulldogger, which is nice for a steer wrestler like him, who analyzes how the rest of the competition fares to plan his own run.
“We knew we had a little time to play with and we made our game plan and just stuck with the game plan,” he said. “Sometimes when you change in the middle of the rodeo there, things can go wrong. The main thing in those situations is know what you’re working with and know the steer and make a game plan and just go execute no matter what the buffer ends up being.”
