Champion Bareback Rider Tilden Hooper loves the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo.
“This is definitely the place to get excited for a ride,” Hooper said in an interview the morning after coming in first place in the first round of opening night, February 9, 2012 at the AT&T Center.
See PART II: Interview with Tilden Hooper here
“With the firecrackers, the laser lights and the loud San Antonio fans cheering us on, it sure makes it easier to get motivated for the task at hand.”
Hooper scored 86 points (out of 100) by riding Freefall, and appropriate name for the horse from Beutler & Son Rodeo Company that first night.
Hooper, who hails from Carthage, Texas, is part of some of the toughest competitors in professional rodeo and a member of the Crown Royal Riders.
If Hooper, or any of the other Crown Royal Riders, including bull riders Wesley Silcox, Cody Whitney, Steve Woolsey or Clayton Williams scores a 90 point (or higher) ride scored by the judges, Crown Royal will donate $1,000 to a non-profit organization that helps injured cowboys and their families.
Called the Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund (JCCF), the fund actually helped Hooper when he suffered a neck injury last year for a few months.
Hooper gained notoriety when he won the 2007 College National Rodeo (CNFR) Championship and went straight to being named the 2007 PRCA Bareback Rookie of the Year.
Just last June Hooper equaled the bareback riding world record by scoring a 94 (out of 100) in Silver City, New Mexico.
The JCCF is the same organization that puts on a Thanksgiving Rodeo School that Hooper attended back in 2006 to prepare for the college finals while he represented Panola Junior College.
Hooper said some of what he learned at this school certainly helped him along the way to become a qualifier two times at the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
“It’s interesting how things worked out,” Hooper recollects. “My teachers at that school were World Champions like Will Lowe, Wes Stevenson, and Royce Ford.”
“I was just honored to be around those guys,” says Hooper. “Just a couple of years later I was qualifying with them at the (Wrangler National Finals Rodeo) finals.
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