Bull Rider Rides for the Kids

By age 6, Andrew Coughlin of De Smet, S.D. knew he wanted to be a cowboy. Now, at age 26, he’s a PRCA pro and spends his year criss-crossing the United States, attending some 150-200 rodeos a year and putting countless miles on his Chevy Malibu.

Coughlin comes from a long line of rodeo competitors on his mother’s side, including his mother herself, who not only raced barrels, but entered so-called ‘powder puff’ rodeos in which female competitors perform all of the events, including rough stock. Coughlin’s mother was a bull rider. Today, so is he.

“I’ve always liked bull riding,” he said. “All my uncles rode bulls and everything, so I kept going with them. My oldest uncle was the first one to put me on a calf and pull my rope and everything, he was my idol since I was little.”

Saturday was not Coughlin’s first time to San Angelo, and he says he loves the place. The people are friendly, there’s no snow, and “the hospitality here is the best ones I’ve seen,” he said with a laugh, having just finished eating a fresh meal after his run.

Like most riders, Coughlin describes competing as a rush, but says there are other things he loves about being part of the rodeo circuit. “[My favorite part is] just getting out and meeting the people. We love bull riding—we love to do it. It only lasts eight seconds, but it’s meeting new people along the way, I mean, every state we have a friend somewhere, so that’s always nice,” he said.

Coughlin estimates that in a year, he visits approximately 45 states for up to 200 rodeos. On average, he says, he drives between 12 and 13 hours between rodeo towns—a long distance for an eight-second performance. Afterwards he, along with one to five other cowboys, pack back into the car and drive to the next show.

“Last night we slept in the car. It’s a Chevy Malibu, a little, tiny, car,” he said, pausing briefly in the warm afternoon sunshine. “It gets cold here at night.”

Currently, Coughlin is ranked 80th in the world in bull riding, a number he’d like to see drop a few spaces this year. “Last year I was hurt all year so it was tough,” he said. “I broke my jaw, broke my leg, broke some ribs, and collapsed a lung. This was all three different times.”

Coughlin says a bull rider gets injured just about every day to varying degrees, but a love of the sport keeps him getting back on. But with injuries mounting last year, he did briefly consider finding other employment. “With my jaw, I thought about it (not getting back on), because all it had to do was go from here to here,” he says, holding up his thumb and forefinger to illustrate the short distance between his now healed jaw and his neck. “Then I’d be done. Either that, or I’d be going around in a wheelchair. It’s just a freak accident how it happened, but it’s going to happen sometime. Some people just get luckier than others.”

One thing Coughlin didn’t consider giving up when his jaw was broken was his side job as a bullfighter. The cowboy said he got his start bullfighting when he was visiting a high school rodeo where the fighter didn’t show up. He was asked to fill in and has been doing it ever since. 

“…if I get into a situation while riding bulls I kind of know what to do to get myself out of it. Or if the bullfighter’s not there, I can kind of save myself if I have to, and if I have buddies out there, if they get hurt, then I can go in there and step in,” Coughlin explains.

“It can be [exciting]. If you’ve got a bull that’s pretty snotty, it’s always fun to step in front and have them come after you. You make a little move and it runs past you without even knowing it.”

Coughlin said he did get caught in a corner once with a bull he was fighting and the animal pounded on him for a good 20 seconds, “but it felt like an hour,” he said. The experience made him a bit skiddish and it took him a while to bounce back, he said.

Nonetheless, Coughlin rides and fights on. Currently, the cowboy is growing out his hair to donate to a children’s hospital when it gets long enough. He also donates a percentage of his winnings to the South Dakota Make a Wish Foundation.

“There’s an actual association that’s affiliated with them and they stopped doing it,” he explains. “But just to se the kids faces who got to come to the rodeo is pretty awesome and they don’t it anymore so I just kind of miss it. So now I just want to still be part of it somehow.  That’s the best way I can think of to do it.”