Articles & Pictures by St. Joseph News-Press
03/29/07
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Bullriding is a dirty job - literally
Scott Pummell
Sports Editor
Merging elements of the Old West with Civic Arena is at
least as foreboding a job as the thought of sitting on an angry,
2,000-pound bull.
It takes 30 dump trucks of dirt. Three tractors. Two truckloads of metal
chutes and pens. Eighty-five bucking bulls chosen from a field of 400.
Twenty-five cowboys. And a week or so to assemble it all.
"Then there's the beer, food and people," said Rex Strayer, the
finals director and emcee.
The city expects 7,000 to 10,000 people to watch the Federation Finals of
the National Federation of Professional Bullriders starting at 7 tonight
and running through Saturday night. Civic Arena has hosted the finals
since 1999, so putting all the pieces together - though a large task - now
is an efficiently executed operation.
"It's down to a science," Mr. Strayer said while overseeing the
last remaining duties Wednesday afternoon. "Everything just seems to
fall into place at this point."
But it's a dirty job. Literally.
Workers spread 340 cubic feet of dirt on Civic Arena's concrete floor.
First, they put down a hard layer that was tamped down solid by tractors.
That was covered by a soft layer of dirt.
"That's a lot of work, but the hardest thing is to get good
dirt," Mr. Strayer said. "If it's been raining or snowing, all
you've got is mud."
Dirt issues won't sully this year's event. But mud has been an issue in
the past.
In those cases, the NFPB has turned to "dirt experts" and
concrete workers to dry out the trucked-in soil. They've had to mix in
lime and sand and whatever else might work.
"If you don't have dirt," Mr. Strayer said, "you're not
going to have any cowboys."
Because when it comes down to it, this NFPB event is built from the ground
up. Literally.