2013 PRCA Rookie of the Year Tim O'Connell Returns to Rodeo After Injury

He’s 22-years-old and in his rookie year of the PRCA, was already ranked 18th in the world in bareback riding and was well on his way to the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas. Tim O’Connell of Zwingle, Iowa says people have been telling him that he “picked things up way faster than anybody possibly should,” and after an injury that benched him toward the end of last year, the young cowboy is back in the circuit again, with ambitions of making it to the top.

“This will be my fourth year riding a bucking horse,” O’Connell said recently after an event at the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo. “I was kind of born into it. My dad actually picked this rodeo up and now my brother’s actually picking it up—they’d get us off the horses. I was just kind of always around it and it was always kind of what I wanted to do.”

Professionally, O’Connell is known for riding bareback, but initially, he got his start on a much larger animal. In high school, O’Connell was the state champion bull rider when he was involved in an accident. At that point he had begun riding bareback and as his career took off, he officially made the switch and never looked back.

“I just like it more,” he said simply. “There’s more money in the bull riding, but I like bareback riding. It’s a huge adrenaline rush and it’s more technique than it is hanging on. Not saying bull riders don’t have a lot of technique, but I think our event’s really critical on technique.”

Technique seems to be something the young cowboy has; in his third year, when he was still a permit holder, O’Connell was the circuit champion, something he says can take a good deal of one’s career to achieve. In his first year as a PRCA pro, O’Connell was the 2013 Rookie of the Year.

Among his fondest memories of rodeos past, O’Connell names an 87-point run in Napa, Idaho on a horse no one liked on which he won third, and the San Antonio Rodeo where he made finals last year. O’Connell’s career was going struck, when all of a sudden he was dealt a hard blow.

“I think by far, our event is the most physically demanding on your body,” O’Connell begins. “I didn’t make it through the year last year, I ended up tearing my collarbone off my sternum going into the last month and I was sitting 18th in the world at the time. I didn’t get to finish out the remainder,” he said. “Everybody gets injured. It’s just a really hard event on your body each and every day.”

The injury to his collarbone proved problematic, not just for O’Connell, but for doctors as well. O’Connell describes his collarbone coming clean off his sternum so that it was resting there unattached, able to be moved pushing on it with a finger. After talking to several doctors about surgeries, O’Connell finally came in contact with a good rodeo doctor, who advised him to let it scar back on.

The scarring and healing process took O’Connell off the circuit for several months, and when he arrived in San Angelo he’d only begun riding again three weeks prior.  “I think some of the scar tissue kind of pulled a bit,” he said after his 75-point performance, “it’s getting better every time, it’s just my shoulder doesn’t feel the same as it used to.”

Despite injuries, pain and the imminent threat of more to come, O’Connell says he has never considered giving up.  “Last year I came out and was on the verge of making the NFR on my rookie year. Everywhere I went…everything just worked out. It just took me when I got hurt, it really took me a step back and made me look at the year that I had and it’s just really amazing, it’s a blessing, he said.

“I want to make the NFR this year. I’m not starting real late, but I missed a couple of big ones and I’m just kind of knocking rust off, and I want to make finals, I want to win a world title.”