Bronc Evans brought home the Total Feeds 12 and Under USTRC National Finals Breakaway Championship on Friday, April 28, with a time of 7.42 seconds on three head.
The young man from Fairview, Missouri, can do just about anything that involves having a rope in his hand. Heading, heeling and calf roping are a part of his repertoire, with breakaway taking the spotlight on Friday, netting him $4,020 in winnings.
“On my final run, I have to give all the credit to my dad Jimmy,” Evans, 12, said. “He told me exactly [how long to wait] for my calf—and he wanted me to wait a lot longer than I was going to. But the timing was perfect, I was right on the barrier. The calves would run out there, scotch up, and then run off. You had to go and float across the line.”
Evans caught in 2.12 seconds in the short round, adding to his times of 2.32 and 2.81-seconds in the rounds.
“I’ve been roping my entire life, but I’ve been competing since I was 7 years old,” Evans said. “I love roping because of all my friends I get to see and roping—you never have it mastered. You can’t go out there and catch every steer. So, I like the challenge of it.”
Evans has several goals for himself, and one of the biggest is winning a world championship in the heeling. The homeschooled seventh grader purchased his horse “Pinto” with his own money, which he earned from winning the 2021 Junior World Finals in Las Vegas.
“Jaydon Laubhan owned him, and Taylor Munsell was training it in the breakaway,” Evans said. “Taylor comes down to our house in the wintertime, and she had him and I rode him, loved him, she left with him, and about a week later I thought ‘I can’t live without him.’ So, I bought him. I’ve been fortunate enough to win a lot of things with him.”
The grade tobiano paint may be a good partner for Evans, but he was feeling a little fresh Friday morning and reared up in the box during their first run after Evans tried to pull him up on a slow calf.
“So, when I got him out of the pen, I thought I didn’t have him warmed up near enough,” Evans explained. “I went to making him soft in the face, got him spinning around and stopping, loped him a bunch of circles. Then I got him back up there and he worked phenomenal [on my second entry].”
His schooling set the Paint straight, and Evans is leaving Fort Worth with a H4 Saddle and Gist buckle.
