{"id":22374,"date":"2018-05-02T21:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T03:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=22374"},"modified":"2018-05-24T21:10:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T03:10:54","slug":"family-comes-first-for-states-first-bull-riding-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2018\/05\/family-comes-first-for-states-first-bull-riding-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"Family comes first for state’s first bull-riding champion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jess\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

During an autograph session at Shipton’s Big R Store on Billings’ West End on April 21, Jess Lockwood posed for a photo with a couple of young fans. Lockwood was in town for a Professional Bull Riders invitational tournament.<\/p><\/div>\n

People in Montana have good reason to be proud of Jess Lockwood.<\/p>\n

Last November, at the age of 20, he became the youngest person ever, and the first from Montana, to win the Professional Bull Riders World Championship in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

But we have other reasons to be proud, reasons that go beyond his achievements and say something about the kind of place Montana is. The main reason is that Jess, unlike most of the people competing in professional bull riding these days, grew up on a working ranch, surrounded by an extended family for whom ranching and rodeoing were second nature.<\/p>\n

Almost as soon as he could talk, Jess was telling people he was going to be a bull rider. He was barely two and a half years old when he rode his first \u201cbull.\u201d<\/p>\n

As his mother, Angie Lockwood explained, \u201cWay back when, Bodacious was the PRCA master of the bulls. Bodacious was famous around the world. Jess thought he was a bull rider as soon as he could climb on his dad\u2019s back, and he always pretended he was riding Bodacious.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February 2000, Angie, pregnant with Jake, Jess\u2019s little brother, was visiting her sister, Lisa Lockhart, and her family in Oelrichs, South Dakota. As usual, Jess was wearing what his mother called \u201chis cowboy get-up\u201d \u2014 boots, spurs and chaps \u2014 and his Uncle Grady, Lisa\u2019s husband, jokingly said to him, \u201cJess, I have Baby Bodacious down in the barn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Kids\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of Angie Lockwood<\/p>

Jess Lockwood has always stayed close to his family. This photo from his boyhood was taken at the summer rodeo in Gillette, Wyoming. Jess is at right, with his brother Jake at left and and cousin, Thane, at center.<\/p><\/div>\n

It was actually a little white roping calf, Angie said, no relation to Bodacious, but Jess was all ears, and when Grady asked him if he wanted to go ride Bodacious, Jess said yes. So Grady took Jess down to the barn, where he set him on top of \u201cBaby Bodacious.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight away the calf bellered,\u201d Angie said. \u201cAnd Jess turned to look at Grady and tears just started running down his face. But Grady said, \u2018You still want to ride him?\u2019 Jess just nodded his head, and away he went.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe joked about that from that day forward,\u201d Lisa Lockhart said, \u201cthat we jump-started his career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those family connections are part and parcel of who Jess Lockwood is.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all just pretty normal people around here,\u201d he said. \u201cJust ranch, and that\u2019s pretty much what we do. We don\u2019t do a whole lot. Some people like fame and all that, and we just like being normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Normal, for Jess, meant growing up on the family ranch near Volborg, a tiny town midway between Miles City and Broadus. His parents, Ed and Angie, both went to college on rodeo scholarships. Although Ed was later known as a saddle bronc rider, he started out riding bulls, too, and in 1979, as a student at Miles City Community College, he was the Big Sky region bull-riding champ.<\/p>\n

Angie, originally Angie Schillinger, hailed from a ranch near Circle, and she was such a dedicated barrel racer that she took first in that event, at a rodeo in Williston, North Dakota, just 10 days after Jess was born. Ed, who went on to be the Montana circuit champion bronc rider in 1992, hung up his reins in 2000. Angie kept barrel racing until 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a long haul for us,\u201d Angie said. \u201cWe each put in 20-some years of rodeoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most young people involved in rodeo today would hardly believe how she and her sisters got started, Angie said. Her older sister, Debbie Wolff, learned how to pole bend by running a course on the ranch that consisted of five trees, which had to substitute for the standard six poles. By the time Angie and Lisa were pole bending, their father had set up some homemade poles. By these were not the flexible poles used in competition \u2014 they were pipes set in five-gallon buckets of concrete.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you knocked one of them over, oh, it was ugly,\u201d Angie said. \u201cNobody wants to look at my sisters\u2019 and my legs.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the Schillinger family, rodeo also meant Dairy Day in Brockway, one of the oldest, wildest rodeos in Montana, still going strong every July. Dairy Day has always been an open rodeo, meaning you didn\u2019t have to be certified with any professional organization to compete. Throughout the day there were pony races in the open space between the spectators and the rodeo grounds fence. Families gathered from far and wide for the annual Dairy Day, and legendary quantities of beer were consumed.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>By the time Ed and Angie\u2019s children were born, they were too busy rodeoing to take in Brockway, but the kids all got into the Youth Rodeo Association early on. They all cut their teeth on steer riding, break-away roping, barrel racing, pole bending and goat tying.<\/p>\n

\u201cJess was one of the best goat tiers in the state,\u201d Angie said, still sounding a little proud of the achievement.<\/p>\n

For Jess and brother Jake, growing up in Volborg also meant maintaining close ties with their cousins, Grady and Lisa\u2019s kids, over in South Dakota. Jess and cousin Alyssa were just three months apart, while Jake and cousin Thane were separated by just four months. After Angie quit rodeoing, Lisa\u2019s own rodeo career was really taking off, so Lisa\u2019s kids would spend most of the summer on the ranch in Volborg while Lisa was off competing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose kids, every summer they spent together,\u201d Angie said. \u201cThey\u2019re like peas and pods together.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Jess was just a little boy, riding those imaginary bulls on the living room floor, it was in the company of Jake, Thane and Alyssa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey bucked horses, they tied calves,\u201d Angie said. \u201cAlyssa would get up on a coffee table and start the rodeo off singing the national anthem. She might not have any clothes on. She\u2019d be up there in her underwear. \u2026 It\u2019s been a fun ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through Jess\u2019s remarkable rise to the top of the bull-riding world, the ranch in Volborg and the close connections with family have kept him grounded. That\u2019s one reason his mother has a favorite among the many, many stories that have been broadcast or written about her son in recent years.<\/p>\n

The story was by Justin Felisko, posted on the Professional Bull Riders website the day after Jess became the youngest champion in history. Angie thought so highly of the story because it captured the camaraderie between Jess and his brother, his cousins and his good friend, Weston Hartman.<\/p>\n

\"Angie\"<\/a>

Photo courtesy of Angie Lockwood<\/p>

Angie Lockwood, then Angie Schillinger, competed in barrel racing at the 1994 Montana Pro Rodeo Finals in Great Falls.<\/p><\/div>\n

In that story, Jess told how he dealt with the stress and the pressure of competing on bull-riding\u2019s biggest stage, how he managed to stay close to his roots at a time when it seemed like everybody in Las Vegas wanted to talk to him or take his picture.<\/p>\n

Jess told Felisko: \u201cThe four that stayed in the room with me the whole time \u2014 the Lockhart cousins, my brother and Weston \u2014 having those four with me all the time, I just feel relaxed and I\u2019m having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Relaxation was not easy to come by in 2017. Jess, who was only 19 when the year began, competed in many of the biggest bull-riding competitions in the country, sustaining a slew of painful injuries in the process. He was forced to sit out five weeks of the 2017 season with a torn groin, and in the second part of the season, competing in Missouri, he was knocked unconscious by Sweetpro\u2019s Bruiser, the PRCA and PBR Bull of the Year. On top of that, there were broken ribs, a bruised kidney and a punctured lung. Did we mention the bout of pneumonia?<\/p>\n

But he toughed out all of that last year, winning $1.5 million and placing first in Built Ford Tough Series events in New York, Sacramento, Tulsa and Austin.<\/p>\n

At the end of January, speaking by phone from the family ranch, Jess brushed off his injuries, and a recent spell of sickness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m good,\u201d he said. \u201cI kind of got sick over the weekend with food poisoning-flu stuff, but other than that I\u2019ve been good.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s stays good by exercising in a workout shed he built on the ranch, where he uses free weights and workout machines. In mid-January, he had a dry sauna installed in the shed. In the past, when he had the time, he also helped coach the wrestling team at Powder River County High School in Broadus. Jess, who wrestled at 103 pounds as a freshman (and won the Class B-C title), says he now weighs 130 pounds and is up to 5-foot-5 in height.<\/p>\n

In the same way that he dismissed his recent injuries, he said it hasn\u2019t been too hard getting used to all the acclaim and the constant attention that comes with winning the bull-riding championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it hasn\u2019t been bad,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you put your mind to something and really want to do it, you\u2019ll be successful at it. You shouldn\u2019t be too surprised when any of that stuff happens. If you\u2019re surprised when that stuff happens, you weren\u2019t, I guess, very confident in yourself. It\u2019s really nothing at all. I mean, heck, just talk to people.\u201d<\/p>\n

His mother, though, tells a bit different story. It wasn\u2019t that her son was being rude, she said, but he did get tired of all the demands, of spending too much time being the champion and not enough time being himself with friends and family. The cowboys competing in the PBR finals needed security just to get across the street from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas to the Monte Carlo Resort & Casino hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just gets so overwhelming,\u201d Angie said. \u201cIt would take Jess forever to get there.\u201d Even if he stayed in the arena a bit and came out last, she said, \u201cpeople would stop him and stop him and stop him, and he couldn\u2019t get back to the hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Vegas\"<\/a>

Matt Breneman\/bullstockmedia.com<\/p>

An exultant Lockwood, seen during the third round of the 2017 BFTS PBR World Finals in Las Vegas.<\/p><\/div>\n

There was also the nightly stretch of 45 minutes reserved for the media. \u201cThe media was hard to handle right then,\u201d Angie said. \u201cIt was interviews and interviews and interviews.\u201d And then there was Shania Twain, the country music star who suddenly materialized just when Jess had received his oversized presentation check for winning the bull-riding title.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t Jess getting in a picture with her,\u201d Angie said. \u201cShe photo-bombed him, in a sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once, Jess got so fed up with it all that he put his foot down. After Las Vegas, he was sporting the hair style he had had in the eighth grade, because of a bet with his friend and competitor Derek Kolbaba \u2014 that whoever won the bull-riding title would have to grow out a mullet.<\/p>\n

Jess was in New York, about to go on a Fox TV show for an interview. He had to get up at 5 a.m., and when he got to the studio and found out he had 90 minutes to kill, he promptly stretched out on a couch and fell asleep \u2014 deeply asleep, as is his custom, Angie said.<\/p>\n

Well, 15 minutes before showtime, a woman came in and woke him up, saying it was time for his makeup. Partly because he wasn\u2019t yet fully awake, he later told his mother, he said to the woman, \u201cI ain\u2019t wearin\u2019 no damn makeup. If I\u2019m sporting a mullet and looking like this, you think I need any damn makeup?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo,\u201d Angie said, \u201che went on without any makeup.\u201d<\/p>\n

The best remedy for stress is coming home to the ranch, Angie said. There, Jess can do chores all day if he wants to, or he can do a workout, take a nap or run over to his grandpa\u2019s place, 300 yards away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he quit rodeoing tomorrow,\u201d Aunt Lisa said, \u201cthere\u2019s always going to be a place within the family. \u2026 There\u2019s a lot of us, I\u2019m not going to lie. It\u2019s a huge family support system.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the spring 2018 issue of Raised in the West magazine, published in Billings. Check out\u00a0their website<\/a>\u00a0to see where you can pick up a free copy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People in Montana have good reason to be proud of Jess Lockwood. Last November, at the age of 20, he became the youngest person ever, and the first from Montana, to win the Professional Bull Riders World Championship in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6950,6948,6949,6951],"class_list":["post-22374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-angie-lockwood","tag-jess-lockwood","tag-professional-bull-riders","tag-volborg","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22374"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22661,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22374\/revisions\/22661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}