Childress and Davis Promise Big Things Are in Store for Carolina Cowboys
By: Justin Felisko
TRYON, N.C. – On Friday afternoon, Richard Childress took a seat on a bench at the Tryon International Equestrian Center and looked out toward the plaza in front of him.
The Carolina Cowboys Chevy No. 3 race car was parked next to the PBR Shop merchandise trailer. A slew of fans were posing for photos in their new Cowboys t-shirts next to the baby blue painted stock car.
“We’ll be carrying the North Carolina brand throughout all the other states in the region,” Childress said. “We’re going to be riding, and we hope we’ve got our fan base that can watch us on TV (CBS, CBS Sports Network and RidePass on Pluto TV) and pull for the Carolina Cowboys. And when we’re riding in Winston-Salem on Sept. 9-11, it’s going to be really exciting. I hope we can get everybody out there. I want to fill the house and let everyone know that we have a lot of fans in North Carolina for the PBR.”
This weekend’s PBR Tryon Chute Out: PBR Teams Series Preseason Event was the first opportunity for the Cowboys to play host to a PBR Team Series event in their home state, and the scene in the plaza was just a taste of what is to come for Carolina fans.
A sellout crowd of more than 4,000 fans was welcomed with food trucks and bands on the way into the stadium this weekend. Richard Childress Racing has much bigger plans in store when they host Cowboy Days on Sept. 9-11 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“What we’re going to do is we’re working with the city of Winston-Salem, and they’re really excited about having the PBR there,” Childress said. “They’re going to help us promote all of our events around it on Friday night, Friday afternoon before the event. We’re going to have a concert. We’re going to have food trucks. We’re going to have a lot of exciting things going on. Saturday, we’re going to be doing a lot of other things in and around it. They want me to do a go-kart race, so we may end up with a go-kart track out there. Then Sunday, they have an annex there, and we’re going to have cowboy church on Sunday, so we’re hoping we’ll fill the building with it.”
On the dirt, however, the Cowboys underwhelmed in Tryon.
Carolina went 0-2 this weekend, losing to Oklahoma (2-2) 173-0 on Friday night, and 84.25-0 to Nashville (2-2) on Saturday night.
To be fair, the Cowboys did not have their primary starters in Tryon after the group went 2-0 and rode seven of 10 bulls a week ago in Bismarck, North Dakota. The Cowboys went 0-for-10 in game competition in Tryon.
Head coach Jerome Davis and Childress explained this weekend that the team wanted to give their bench riders a chance to ride, and doing so in front of a home crowd was a good opportunity to see which riders could handle the added pressure.
“We don’t have all our very top riders, and we’ve got some young riders that we wanted to take a look at,” Childress said. “That’s what this preseason’s for.”
Davis added, “Well, we’re going to move forward. It’s preseason for a reason. We had these guys, and we had to look at them. We learned a lot after this weekend, and I feel good when we put our starting roster together and we roll into Cheyenne (July 25-26) for the season-opener. We rode more bulls than anybody last week, and this week, we rode the least, but we’ve seen everybody now. We know what we’ve got on our team, and we know where to put them. So we’re going to move forward from here.”
The preseason does not affect the PBR Team Series championship race and standings. These games are strictly exhibitions for the eight teams to prepare for the upcoming season, which will begin in one month in Cheyenne.
However, there was a moral victory for the Cowboys in Tryon.
There are more Cowboy fans today than at the start of the week, and Childress sees them coming from all over the country – not just North Carolina.
“We’re planning on having everybody as fans,” Childress said. “Just like in football, you pull for the closest team to you. Since North Carolina is right in the middle (of the east coast), kind of between north and south, we should have fans in Florida all the way up to the other side of New York somewhere. Daylon Swearingen, this year’s World Champion with the PBR, he’s from New York. So I think we’re going to bring a lot of fans from all over, and we’ve got a lot of our riders are from all around, too. So they’ll be pulling for Carolina.”
Davis promises his team will put forth a better showing on the dirt when they host Cowboy Days this coming September at LVJM Coliseum when the team’s full starting lineup, which includes 2022 PBR World Champion Daylon Swearingen and 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis, is unleashed.
“There’s one thing about bull riding in North Carolina: people just love it,” Davis said. “It don’t matter whether it’s a rodeo or a bull riding in the Carolinas. They’re not settling down every time, and it’s pretty awesome to see the crowd showing up this weekend.
“I can’t wait until we have our team going strong come Winston-Salem and they get to see where we’re at.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
Photo courtesy of Andre Silva/Bull Stock Media
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