National Bull Riding Champion
July 24, 2009
The 4th of July was extra festive for Dalton this year. He rode into the Short-Go competition on July 4th in Gallup, New Mexico in first place after leading the points average all week long! He rode his first bull on Tuesday, June 30th in the morning performance. He drew a really good bull and was awarded a score of 76 for his effort. That score was good enough to win the first go-round and put him first in the average going into round two competition. Only 12 riders out of about 100 rode for qualified rides in round one! He rode his round two bull in the Thursday evening performance. It was not as good of a bull as he had in round one; but Dalton was happy to just get a score, even if it was only a 53. The 53 still left him tied for 3rd in round two. Dalton had a combined score of 129 which was good enough to hang on to first place going into the championship round. After two rounds of riding the top 20 riders in the average make it back to the championship round. The short-go was held on the evening of the 4th of July. Bull riding was the last event of the night and Dalton was the last rider of the 2009 finals because the 20th ranked cowboy went first and then on down to the number one ranked cowboy. The stock contractors has chosen the best bulls to perform in the championship round. Only 5 cowboys came into the short-go with scores on two bulls; the other 15 had only ridden one bull during the two rounds. Three riders who had only one previous score were able to get qualified rides during the short-go. As Dalton sat down on his bull, he already knew the championship belonged to him. The other riders with 2 previous rides had all bucked off and he was still leading the average in points. Dalton was determined to be the only rider to cover all three bulls during the finals week. He had a good bull drawn but after some belly rolls and pretty big lunges, Dalton came off the right side of the bull at 7.4 seconds. He was very disappointed but was soon elated and overcome with crowd support and the thought that he just became the first Nebraska Wrangler Division cowboy to win a National Championship! Dalton won many many wonderful prizes and $3000 in scholarship money during the week of competition. The championship round will be televised on RFD-TV later this fall during the 20X Rodeo High show that is aired on Wednesday nights.
Dalton will be a ninth grader at Bloomfield High School and will be moving on to the high school competition this fall. Dalton is the son of Gail and Suzanne Cunningham of Bloomfield and the grandson of David and Sharon Peters of Bloomfield and Dean & Elda Cunningham of Wausa.
