Crimber Excited to See What Sellars Will Do for Team Cat Alongside 41-Year-Old Oliveira
By: Justin Felisko
PUEBLO, Colo. – Paulo Crimber may be the General Manager for Team Cat, but he also has an unofficial assistant GM helping him out behind the scenes.
Crimber was scrambling on Sunday night to find a replacement for Jake Lockwood after the 20-year-old informed him that he had aggravated his right knee injury dating back to last year when he was at a bull riding in Nebraska this past weekend.
Therefore, Crimber started looking at which riders were even available for him to add to his team, and he admittedly was not recognizing many of the names in the alternate pool.
Paulo’s son John, though, is an aspiring professional bull rider and follows the sport closely. Paulo looked at his son and asked if he had any ideas.
That is when John told Paulo to reach out to 2018 PRCA Rookie of the Year Clayton Sellars. John could not forget Sellars’s memorable 91.5-point ride on Spotted Demon at the 2019 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.
Paulo began to look up more of Sellars’s rides on Instagram and was impressed with what he saw. Then he was curious as to why Sellars was nowhere to be found in the 2020 bull riding standings.
Well, that was because Sellars sustained a torn left ACL/PCL at the Jan. 22 Xtreme Bulls event in Fort Worth, Texas, and had been out for almost five months recovering from reconstructive knee surgery.
It did not take long for Crimber to realize Sellars was worth the roll of the dice with Division B of the Monster Energy Team Challenge, presented by U.S. Border Patrol, set to begin this Friday in Las Vegas.
“You can thank John for that,” Paulo said with a laugh this week. “This alternate stuff is really thin. These guys in the PRCA, I don’t really know these guys. So I told John to take a look at this list and see if you know anybody. He told me about Clayton Sellars, who is really, really good. He rode Spotted Demon last year at the NFR really, really easy. He rode that sucker like a day off and away from his hand.
“To be able to ride that bull and have that much control on a sucker like that, the only one I have seen ride him that good was Marco Eguchi two years ago (at the World Finals), but it was into his hand.”
Paulo was so impressed with what he saw that he has decided to place Sellars in his starting lineup on Friday night alongside 11-time PBR World Finals qualifier Valdiron de Oliveira and Alex Cerqueira.
Team Cat begins Division B competition against Team Boot Barn for its first of six games at the Pendleton Whisky Let ‘Er Buck Saloon at the South Point Arena.
Fans can watch all of the action LIVE on CBS Sports Network and RidePass beginning at 9:45 p.m. ET
The Top 3 teams in the final Division B standings on June 28 will join the Top 3 teams from Division A – Team Cooper Tires, Team Las Vegas and Team Can-Am – in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for Championship Weekend on July 10-12.
“I am pretty excited,” Sellars said. “Man, I haven’t really been following it much. I have been focused on myself down here coming off this injury. I have just kind of been working out hard and getting myself back in shape. I haven’t watched much of anything.”
Sellars admitted he was surprised to get the phone call from Crimber, but he had just recently been on about three practice bulls last week and was feeling ready to start hitting up the rodeo trail again.
Sellars spent some of his off-time from surgery working out at saddle bronc rider Brody Cress’s house in Stephenville, Texas, alongside a series of bull riders, including Team Las Vegas’ Chase Dougherty.
Friday night will be Sellars’s first bull riding back since tearing his ACL and PCL.
“This is my first competitive event back,” Sellars said. “Practice went great. I never missed a beat. I am right back to where I left off.”
The Fruitland Park, Florida, native began riding bulls at 7 years old, following in the footsteps of his father, Brady, and older brother, Austin. Sellars looked up to two-time PRCA champion Jim Sharp and said he tried to model his riding style after the Razor.
Sellars could be a sneaky addition for Team Cat and Crimber. Sellars attended Western Texas College in Snyder, Texas, and earned an associate’s degree in agriculture science. He qualified two times for the Collegiate National Finals Rodeo, finishing second in 2018, the same year in which he won the PRCA’s Rookie of the Year award in bull riding.
He qualified for his first Wrangler National Finals Rodeo last year, where he made that noteworthy ride on Spotted Demon and went 4-for-10.
“The ride itself was pretty simple,” Sellars recalled. “It was about exactly how I pictured it. He jumped out there kicking and spinning around the right, and I just had to crawl way out over him every round.
“I have not nearly achieved what I have wanted to achieve yet. I feel like I have shown I can ride bulls. I am just excited to go do it again.”
Sellars went 4-for-8 in his only four PBR events last year, but this will be the first time he gets to ride alongside Oliveira.
Oliveira was 18 years old when Sellars was born, and Sellars was 8 when Oliveira made his PBR premier series debut in 2007.
“I actually did watch Valdiron when I was a kid,” Sellars said. “I liked him. He was a big ol’ strong dude. He always rode well. It is pretty cool to get to compete with the PBR guys. I haven’t really had the opportunity to much. I am excited, man. I think it is going to be super neat.”
It took Oliveira until about last September to finally overcome the infection, which he treated with antibiotics and a series of shots. He eventually got the all clear to return to competition in January, but once he returned to the U.S. in March the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak cancelled/postponed all of the Velocity events at which he was planning on competing.
Instead of returning home to Brazil, Oliveira waited things out in the United States, focused on his training regimen, and began entering any open bull ridings or PRCA events he could.
Last weekend, Oliveira finished second at the Mesquite Championship Rodeo with an 80-point ride.
Crimber and Oliveira played cards with their families until 2 in the morning on Sunday night, and Crimber said Oliveira is ready to crack his bull rope back out at PBR events and lead his team.
“He rode pretty good in Mesquite,” Crimber said. “He is running a lot. He is doing a bunch of stuff. He is healthy. He is hungry. It wasn’t very easy (in Mesquite). It was a little creaky. He had a chance to look off or jump off, but that is one thing he doesn’t have, is that looking off. When he nods his head, they have to buck him off. He is not going to jump off.
“It is going to be really, really good for him to lead this team.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
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