BULLRIDER TO STAMPEDE
Parsonage real live cowboy
Last weekend meant Camrose and Coleman. Next week means Stavely. At the very moment, too, Jared Parsonage is in cowboy country — a tumbleweed’s tumble west of Fort Worth, Texas.
This stopover, though, represents a respite from the grinding pace of the rodeo trail. Parsonage is simply attending a buddy’s wedding, which features the typical lineup — rehearsal, church doings, dinner, dancing.
Barring a boot-scootin’-boogie mishap, what could go wrong?
No unsettling trips to the chutes to confront hostile bulls. No split-second bursts to chase down panicked calves. No chance of injury. For a change.
“Every now and then, it’s good to have a break — I don’t mind it, especially now,” Parsonage was saying Thursday morning. “A guy’s got to try to be healthy. I’m pretty good right now, knock on wood. It gets really busy come June, July, August, so you’ve got to keep yourself altogether.
“So I took the weekend off — a guy’s only supposed to get married once, so I figured I might as well come.”
Rodeo is no pastime for Parsonage.
Winnings — more so from bull riding than his roping — pay the bills for the cowboy from Maple Creek, Sask. Good thing the off-season is short, barely two months.
“Yeah, exactly,” says Parsonage. “If you take five months off, that’s no income — then you’ve got to get a job or something.”
Which is not his intent. Not yet, anyway.
So he’s all in. After all, it is no sport for dabblers. Full-bore focus is required. “Either you’re going to do it or not do it,” Parsonage says. “Riding bulls is a hard happy-medium … it’s not a halfway deal. A person’s really got to be committed. It hurts too much to just do it every now and then.” Early returns are positive. In 2015 — his first full season as a professional — he cashed cheques/checks on both sides of the border and qualified for the Canadian Finals Rodeo.
“It’s a good lifestyle,” he says. “You get to travel around, be with your friends all the time. And if it goes good, you can make a good living.”
Already, he’s been invited to the Calgary Stampede.
“Pretty cool,” says Parsonage, who turned 23 last month.
“Definitely a dream. Definitely one of the goals a guy’s got — a chance to ride for a lot of money on a big stage.”
Not that a future in rodeo had ever been in doubt.
Father Don team-roped. Mother Jill barrel-raced.
Sister Taryn followed her mom, while Parsonage carved out his own path — learning to rope, playing defence for hockey teams, digging the art of bull riding. Soon enough the boy was clambering aboard steers — including one unremarkable display at the Stampede.
“I always wanted to do it,” Parsonage says of bull riding, “but never guessed I would’ve got here.”
Following a decorated threeyear run at Weatherford (Texas) College, his 2014 pro campaign was snipped short. Midsummer, he’d wrecked at Bonnyville.
“Got run over and tore my knee out and smashed it up,” he says of the posterior-cruciate ligament damage, which didn’t stop him from making an ill-advised hop onto another bull only weeks later. “It hurt so bad, I was like, ‘There is no way this is going to work.’”
Shut down, he chose rehabilitation over surgery, which, unappetizingly, requires a recovery time of a year and a half.
“If you ride bulls you don’t have a year and a half (to spare).”
Brace on his knee, he returned last summer, capturing the Jace Harty Memorial event in Ponoka.
“A really, really big one — my first real big win,” says Parsonage. “A pretty dang good day.”
Pretty dang good, too, had been the CFR debut, months later, in Edmonton. First bull of his first day on his first visit to Rexall Place, Parsonage topped the field.
“Pretty cool,” he says. “You hope the rookie blues don’t kick in.”
Jacked by last year’s success — through 70 shows — Parsonage is nevertheless in no mood to savour. He and travelling partner Jordan Hansen of Okotoks are gunning for 100 appearances.
When aiming for the promised land of the National Finals Rodeo, cowboys need to earn.
“So you definitely pound the pavement, but that’s part of it,” says Parsonage. “I don’t know how many miles you put on …”
He laughs. “And maybe you don’t want to know. You’ve got to take care of business, but there’s a lot that goes into it.” Including physical erosion. Parsonage, while envisioning perhaps another 10 years in the sport, vows to pay heed to signs of bodily breakdown.
“I don’t want to end up so crippled up I can’t do anything else. There’s lots of life beyond riding bulls … but I definitely have a lot of goals I want to reach.”