Swearingen Right Back to Front of the Pack in Return from Groin Injury
By: Darci Miller
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – At the Carolina Cowboys training camp at the Davis Rodeo Ranch in June, head coach Jerome Davis and his roster of cowboys set their mentality for the season.
“Our goal isn’t to start the season good. Our goal is to finish the season good,” 2022 World Champion Daylon Swearingen said. “And that’s our mentality from June, when we had our training camp, all the way until the end of November.”
Starting the season strong may not have been the Cowboys’ goal, but they’ve achieved it anyway.
On the first night of competition at Outlaw Days in Kansas City, Missouri, the Cowboys improved to 3-0 on the season with a 173.25-0 win over the Missouri Thunder.
Swearingen’s 88.75-point ride on Hoka Hey led the way for the Cowboys, who also received an 84.5-point ride by 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis.
“That was a really good bull,” Swearingen said. “I live in Sulphur Springs, (Texas), and actually, a good friend of mine, it used to be his bull. So it was pretty cool that I got to get on him. It just worked really good. He kind of jumped out there a couple, went left. He’s just a really nice bull, and I’m thankful Jerome put me on him.”
Swearingen is now 2-for-3 and sits No. 3 in the early MVP race with an aggregate of 178.25 points, one bull behind No. 1 Jose Vitor Leme (270.25 points) and No. 2 Davis (262.75 points). Leme bucked off for the first time this season in his first out in Kansas City.
Swearingen finished No. 2 in the 2022 MVP race, ultimately unable to catch Leme, and he’s ready to get right back into it in 2023.
“Coop, he’s in there; he’s in it,” Swearingen said. “Definitely want it to go to Carolina, but I definitely want it. So me and Coop, we’ll just be going back and forth, I think.”
It’s a lofty goal for a rider coming off a groin injury and surgery that forced him to miss all but five events of the 2023 Unleash The Beast season.
“I think the most frustrating thing was that I kept just going, and it kept getting worse and worse, my groin, where if I fixed earlier on, I probably wouldn’t have had to do all that,” Swearingen said. “So it was a big learning experience. I wasn’t frustrated or anything. I knew it was all in God’s plan. I just had to take a step back and listen to my body a little bit more. So that’s what I’ve been doing – trying to keep my body feeling good. Took last weekend off and am feeling good going into this week.”
Lately, it’s been his hip that’s been barking at him, and he’s been much more proactive in working with the sports medicine team to get it figured out.
“Just tightness,” Swearingen said. “It’s the same side I had my groin surgery on, and I had hip surgery three years ago now. Maybe that time off, I was working my groin so much I wasn’t really working my hip, and now I’m just trying to get my hip opened back up and loosened back up and feeling good.”
The hip tightness hasn’t seemed to hinder his riding. Between the Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals and the PBR Camping World Team Series season-opener in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Swearingen won a PBR Canada Cup Series event and two Challenger Series events and finished in the Top 5 in two additional Challenger Series events. In 13 PBR events total this summer, he placed in seven of them.
Swearingen credits the Missouri Thunder’s Kade Madsen with pushing him and keeping him motivated during the offseason.
“He’s young, hungry, and ready to go, so I think that’s good for me, kind of helps me light my fire back. It was already lit, but that put a little more into it,” Swearingen said. “I look up to Kade. He’s a really good kid. Rode bareback horses really good. And so it’s pretty cool to roll with him.”
It’s also helped to be on a juggernaut of a team and in starting lineups with Davis, 2020 Rookie of the Year Boudreaux Campbell, seven-time PRCA World Champion Sage Kimzey (who’s currently out with a broken collarbone), and Josh Frost.
“This team has helped me out a lot this year, with Coop and Sage and Josh,” Swearingen said. “Just everybody in there, all cowboys. We go out there and we give it everything we’ve got, and ever since we had our training camp in June, it’s been that way the whole time.”
The Cowboys will look to keep things rolling in Kansas City on Friday night when they take on the No. 2 Austin Gamblers (3-0). Action begins at 8:30 p.m. ET on RidePass on Pluto TV.
As the only two teams with perfect records, the game is sure to be a slugfest and will pose Carolina’s toughest challenge yet. But Swearingen couldn’t be more confident in the men he shares a locker room with.
“Any guy in there could get on any bull that we get in our five and ride him. I believe that,”
Swearingen said. “So those seven guys in there make me have to go better because if they’re going to put me in, I’ve got to be better than them. And we’re all just feeding off each other, so it’s awesome. I can’t even explain it.”
Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
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