(PRCA media release)
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Bull rider Roscoe Jarboe, who qualified for the past two Wrangler National Finals Rodeos, is sidelined indefinitely with a back injury.
Jarboe suffered the injury following his 87-point ride on Andrews Rodeo’s F1 in the first round at Rodeo Austin (Texas), March 21. Moments after Jarboe made the whistle, he came off the bull and was on the ground on his hands and knees when the bull came back around and stepped on Jarboe’s back with its back feet.
“What I know is I broke my L3 vertebra and I’m going to have a CT scan (April 2 in Caldwell, Idaho),” said Jarboe, who didn’t experience any paralysis. “I’m going to find out if I need surgery or if it will just heal by itself. I had a good get-off after my ride, the bull just stepped on me and squished me. At first, I thought I broke some ribs because it was a sharp pain up high. Once the adrenaline started wearing off it eventually came lower, it felt like it was in my hip. When I had X-rays, it was determined I broke that part of my back.”
Jarboe was 12th in the April 2 PRCA World Standings with $27,767. Jarboe, 21, is back at home in New Plymouth, Idaho, and scheduled to go to the doctor Wednesday for a follow-up visit. Jarboe tied for fifth with Boudreaux Campbell in the first round in Austin and earned $2,566, but he had to opt out of the semifinals because of his injury.
“When I was younger, coming out of my freshman year in high school I had a slight fracture of my L4 (vertebra), but nothing this serious,” Jarboe said. “This was a freak accident. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jarboe was the 2016 PRCA Resistol Bull Riding Rookie of the Year and placed ninth in the world standings with $149,765. He won Round 2 at that year’s NFR with an 88.5-point ride on Wayne Vold Rodeo’s Cooper’s Comet.
Last year at the NFR, Jarboe also finished ninth in the world standings with $156,855. He placed in three rounds, highlighted by his second-place effort in Round 1 with an 87-point ride on Honeycutt Rodeo’s Braggin Rights.
Meantime, Westyn Hughes’ primary PRCA event is tie-down roping.
However, the Caldwell, Texas, cowboy has always wanted to compete in two events and he really wanted to try his hand as a bareback rider.
After receiving some coaching from Wrangler National Finals Rodeo bareback riders Jake Brown and Bill Tutor, Hughes, on his second practice ride March 28 at Hill College in Hillsboro, Texas, ran into some trouble.
“I was riding the horse really good and I covered him and after I got done riding him I went down to double grab and somehow the horse just jerked me forward and I just got whipped down,” Hughes said. “We went two full laps around the arena, and she was dragging me. My buddy tried to get my hand out of the riggin’ and he didn’t have any luck and she mashed me up against the fence for about 20 yards. Then she just stomped me out of the riggin’ and I believe that’s when my arm broke. I fractured both bones in my right roping arm from my wrist to my elbow. I’m in a full cast right now.”
Hughes is 16th in the April 2 tie-down roping PRCA World Standings with $16,758.
He was the 2016 PRCA Resistol Tie-Down Roping Rookie of the Year and finished 25th in the world standings with $49,804. A year ago, Hughes was 20th in the world standings with $70,016.
“Westyn has been working real hard and we went to get on the first live horses up there at Hill College,” Tutor said. “He rode the first one great and did an outstanding job, and then on the second one he rode great and he sat up to double grab the horse and the horse just took his hips away from him and he got hung up. What started out good turned into a wreck. It was just terrible luck, and that was the last thing we wanted to have happen on his first outing.”
Hughes said he believes he will be out of action from tie-down roping for up to two months, and it might be three months before he can do anymore bareback riding.
“I plan on getting back on as soon as they will let me,” said Hughes, 20. “I was fortunate, this wreck could have been a lot worse. I always wanted to ride a bareback horse and I thought it would be cool to do two events. This is just one of those things that happened, and it is a learning process. I was just hoping to start getting on some horses to where I could enter some smaller rodeos during the summer run when I was roping. There’s never a good time to get hurt, but I’m just glad this happened now and not in June.”
