WELCOME RODEO NEWS FANS
Silver looks to earn first NFR bid
Warner bulldogger Tooter Silver has never made the National Finals Rodeo. But a few more performances like last weekend and that will change this year.
Silver, 27, won the steer wrestling at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo Sunday after several weeks of competition. The rodeo has 31 performances, and started the same weekend at the International Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City last month, which Silver qualified for the seventh consecutive year.
In Fort Worth, the Warner cowboy bested a talented field of steer wrestlers that included several world champions. Silver tied 2006 world champion Dean Gorsuch with the fastest time during Sunday's finals round with a 3.5-second run.
Silver finished with the best three-run aggregate of 12.2 seconds to win the rodeo and more than $11,700, which catapulted him to sixth place in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association steer-wrestling standings.
"It was a huge win,” Silver said Tuesday from Arkansas where he is working as job foreman on a construction site for gas well pads. "It's one of those rodeos everybody dreams about winning.”
Even though Silver has never made the NFR, he is used to success. He won the Prairie Circuit championship in 2005, a season that included a first-place title at the Oklahoma State Fair Rodeo and a second-place finish at the prestigious Dodge City, Kan., Roundup.
That earned him a spot in the 2006 National Circuit Finals Rodeo, which features the top circuit contestants from all over the United States. At that national championship, Silver finished second but earned more money than any other bulldogger in the field, collecting more than $10,000.
"The only thing I haven't done is make the NFR,” he said.
Off to a great start this season, Silver is thinking maybe this will be the year he qualifies for the one rodeo that has eluded him. He will be rodeoing in Mississippi this weekend with hopes of winning more money that will eventually earn him a December trip to Las Vegas, Nev.
Silver came close in 2005 to making the NFR but was slowed by a knee injury. He plans to rodeo as much as possible this year in hopes of getting in the NFR.
"I am not going to jump out and go to 150 rodeos (this season), but I am going to try to go to as many as I can,” he said. "As high as fuel is right now, it costs too much to go if you ain't winning every weekend.”
In a sport noted for unusual names, Silver may have the most unusual. His real name is Kenneth, although no one calls him anything but Tooter.
"My mom always called me a little toot, and it just turned into Tooter,” he said.
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