Rider Hawkins thankful to be back in NFR action

Victoria Sun

Monday, Dec. 10, 2001 | 9:54 a.m.

Competing at the National Finals Rodeo is nothing new to bareback rider Pete Hawkins.

The 27-year-old from Weatherford, Texas, has qualified three times before and fell just $822 short of winning the title in 1999.

Even so, Hawkins arrived at this year's sold-out finals at the Thomas & Mack Center more thankful and humbled by the experience than ever, and with good reason -- he missed last year's finals because of a broken backbone.

"To be back here and competing, it's almost unexplainable," Hawkins said Sunday. "It's just a great, overwhelming feeling. Any time you set a goal a year ago and here it is a year later, the deadline's come and you've achieved it, I mean there's no greater satisfaction to me than that.

"I was nervous in my first go-round like it was my first time to be here. I had these butterflies and everything, but after the second go-round, I've kind of gotten back into my groove and it feels more like home.

"It's just been euphoric, amazing to be back here doing what I love."

Hawkins followed his second-place finish in the second go-round with a no-score on a reride in Sunday night's third go-round.

Lan LaJeunesse's 86-point ride gave him his second consecutive first-place finish at the Finals. He leads the NFR average with 253 points on three rides and is atop the world standings at $128,850.31.

Hawkins entered the NFR seventh in the world standings and moved up one spot after the first three performances. The winner of the NFR average earns $34,678, which counts towards the world standings.

At this time last year, Hawkins was holed up in a gym with good friend Jason Jeter, also a bareback rider, working out rigorously so that he could compete again this year.

The freak injury occurred last July when Hawkins was in St. Paul, Ore., at the St. Paul rodeo. Hawkins was in the chute and the horse flipped over. He broke a vertebra in his lower back.

Because he didn't think it was a major injury, Hawkins didn't see a doctor for several days.

Once he did, he ended up in the hospital for 10 days.

"It was kind of a big-time downer," Hawkins said. "I had never really been injured seriously before. When I was injured, it took a big toll on me because I was in the top five at the time."

After he was released, Hawkins was forced to wear a body brace that severely limited his mobility for three months.

To stave off boredom, Hawkins learned how to whittle wood from former Dallas Cowboys running back Walt Garrison, a family friend, and hung out poolside at his home.

"I was pretty motionless when I was in that brace for at least three weeks so once a week I'd go over to Walt's house," Hawkins said. "I've learned to make some really neat things that I probably would have never learned how to do unless I had broken my back."

The time he spent away from bareback riding was the most difficult period in his life, he said.

Hawkins was always an avid football and soccer player, but as the son of a professional bareback rider and steer roper, he had been around rodeos all of his life, he said.

"One day I told my dad, 'I think I'm ready; I want to get on a bareback horse,' " Hawkins said. "From that point on, he was behind me the whole way, so it has worked out really good.

"When I was rodeoing, riding bareback horses and competing, I was by myself. When I won, it felt better for me to win doing that than it did in football."

But Hawkins would have given it all up if he didn't think he could come back as good as he was before the accident.

"I just didn't want to come back and not be the same caliber of guy," Hawkins said. " I made the decision that if I was going to do this, I was going to come back as good as I was before or better."