LAS VEGAS – He’s not wearing camouflage, but J.D. Struxness is definitely a hunter.
He’s not trapsing through the woods in search of food; he’s in Las Vegas, and his prey is the steer wrestling world standings. He’s been stalking for nine nights, and he’s closing in on his target with one round remaining at the National Finals Rodeo.
Struxness struck again during Friday’s ninth round, grappling his steer to the ground in 4.0 seconds to finish in a tie for second place worth $23,364. He also moved up a spot to eighth in the NFR aggregate race with an eight-run cumulative time of 32.4 seconds while earning more than $127,000. Should he remain in that spot in the average, Struxness will add $8,150 Saturday night.
He trails the world-standings leader, Nevadan Dakota Eldridge, by $13,351. Eldridge also was 4.0 seconds Friday, so no ground was made up.
“He’s wanting to keep it interesting at the end there and not let me get the head start on him,” said Struxness, who has season earnings of $274,446. “It wouldn’t be the first time I came from behind of Dakota.
“It’s one of those endings where it’s stressful, but it’s fun. We’re in position where we have to cut loose and open up and try things, because we’re needing to place good every night to even have a chance. That makes it fun, because we’re cutting loose wide open, trying to set things up, trying to be as fast as we can, taking chances. We’re doing things on steers that are making the steers better and doing things that are going our way on these steers.”
The trump card in this race is NFR veteran Will Lummus, who is third in the world standings and trails Struxness by nearly $37,000. Lummus, though, is second in the average race and could win $70,000 by finishing in that position when the curtain closes Saturday night.
“We’re just backing in there,” Struxness said. “The horses are still locked in. They’ve been doing great all week, and they’re taking it well. We jut rock and roll, go out there and open up and try to do our job. We just try to keep placing high
“We’re in one of those situations where we have nothing to lose. We need to capitalize, maximize and over-maximize our steers we have, then we’ll sit back and watch how it shakes out after that.”