76th SandHills Stock Show and Rodeo: PRCA judges do tough job with pride

When the gate swings open on the bucking chutes at rodeos all over the country, all eyes in the building focus on the animal and cowboy blasting into the arena.

As the ride closes in on the magical eight seconds and the noise and excitement climb at the same time, three other pairs of eyes focus on the action as well - but for entirely different reasons.

With two set behind the chutes and four others on the arena floor, those eyes belong to the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association judges, the ones entrusted with quickly assessing both the rider and the animal and marking each ride accordingly.

Joe-Bob Locke, Chuck Hoss and Rocky Steagal have drawn the duties this week at the 76th SandHills Stock Show and Rodeo and Wednesday night they went back to work in the third performance.

They take their job seriously.

"I'll probably do around 125 performances a year," said Locke, of Delta, Mo. "That's not including slack, just the actual performances.

"I did some calf roping and steer roping growing up, in high school and out on the road for a few years and then at the end, started to judge four or five rodeos a year. Now I do it full time."

The judges have guidelines they use to judge each event.

In the rough stock (bareback, saddle bronc, bull riding) events, there are 25 points available for both the rider and animal from each job, for a possible score of 100 for a perfect ride.

In the timed events, one of the judges sit astride a horse, timing the length of a tie in the tie-down roping or checking for fouls in team roping.

"The riding events are pretty subjective," Steagal said. "If the horse doesn't buck well or the rider doesn't perform well, you could have a 20-point ride on one side and a 10-point ride on the other.

"The timed events are pretty straight forward with what we have to do and what the cowboys have to do."

The trio rotates responsibilities from night to night, judging at least one rough stock and one timed event. All three come from rodeo or ranching backgrounds, so they are familiar with what needs to be done to be successful.

With the number of rodeos that all three work every year, they have seen all the riders numerous times on many different animals. One of the biggest obstacles is getting too familiar with a rider, horse and bull and not paying attention to the actual ride.

"If you do it long enough, you see everything," Hoss said. "But you don't really pay attention to who is riding, you have to pay attention to the ride; you just focus on that eight seconds and mark it."

Those eight seconds can be very lucrative financially for any of the competitors and the judges know that their decisions have the chance to make or break a cowboy's trip to the rodeo.

That's why all three stress doing all the pre-rodeo work necessary to head off any issues or questions that the competitors have before the gates open. Still, they know that in the heat of battle, emotions will run high.

"When you are dividing up money, you just need to go about your job professionally," Locke said. "You try to build relationships and they want to know that you are going to be consistent and fair in your marks."