AT&T Stadium has a little extra meaning to steer wrestler Josh Clark. He is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, who play their home games there, and has watched his favorite team play when they first built the new stadium.
“It’s going to be a pretty neat experience,” he said. “I’m excited to go take it all in.”
He will have plenty of time to take it all in because Clark likes to arrive early to rodeos when he is competing.
“I like to get there early and have time to make sure I got everything in a row the way I want it, let the horses rest, things like that,” he said.
It will be a family affair this weekend for Clark because his kids are here and his dad is flying in for the finals so he added he will enjoy lunch with them and get a light workout in before he arrives at AT&T Stadium.
Not only is Clark a fans of the Cowboys but he was also a terrific football player himself as he played offensive line and middle linebacker and was named to the Montana 1A All-State team in both his junior and senior year. Those skills are transferable to bulldogging, especially the footwork, which Clark focuses heavily on.
“With steer wrestling one of the main things we focus on is footwork and where our feet are and how we place them when we’re getting off the horse.” he said. “Our practices, we slide a stick and there’s some different dummies we use, everything we do when we’re training is breaking down our footwork and trying to perfect it as best as we can.”
Clark says because of this focus on technique and footwork, he doesn’t actually run too many steer while practicing. Instead, he focuses on control and precision. Clark says there’s now a “pretty good size group” that take a similar approach but it is still uncommon. However, with the advancements in technology and video, he thinks more bulldoggers will really start breaking down their runs.
“There’s more than one a skin a cat, there’s more than way to throw a steer down, there’s lots of different styles. Everybody kind of has their own style some of them are similar, some of them aren’t and none of them wrong.....but for what I do, the slow work and the training and the breaking things down step-by-step is a big part of what we do.”
Clark placed 6th out of the 6 semi-final qualifiers because he broke the barrier on his second go. However, that will have no impact on him on Saturday.
“It’s just another week, another rodeo, just going to run another steer.”