Bull riding new event

Columbine Park will be rockin’ this weekend.

By JEFF [email protected] I Columbine Park will be rockin’ this weekend.Not with loud guitars and bangin’ drums.But with cowboys and some of the meanest, baddest behemoths around.New to Rangely’s Septemberfest celebration this year will be the first-ever Rock ’N’ Bull bull-riding event. The competition will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday.“The event will be kind of a kickoff for the new rodeo and horsemanship programs at CNCC,” said Jed Moore, the new rodeo coach at Colorado Northwestern Community College and organizer of the Septemberfest bull-riding event.“As far as the event goes, it will be something like Rangely has never seen,” said Moore, who knows a thing or two about bull riding.Moore, who came to Rangely from Cheyenne, Wyo., has been a professional bull rider for 16 years.“I thought, well, this town is having a festival, they ought to have a bull-riding event,” he said. “So far, the community response has been outstanding. Local businesses have been stepping up.”The event will be a fundraiser, with the proceeds being shared by the CNCC rodeo team, horsemanship program and baseball team.Moore, whose new duties include serving as the facilities manager at Columbine Park, hopes the bull-riding event will not only raise money, but generate interest and exposure for the new CNCC rodeo team.“We’re looking to kick off our program in the fall of ’11,” Moore said. “We don’t have a team just yet … I get a full year to build a program and get to know the area and get some recruiting done and hopefully field a team for the Rocky Mountain Region in 2011.” While the CNCC rodeo team is starting out, Moore’s own bull-riding career is coming to an end.“I want to call it quits while I still have the respect of my peers,” Moore said. ‘I always said I want to quit rodeo before rodeo quits me … I don’t want to be one of those veteran bull riders who can’t walk away.”And while he’s still able to walk.“I tell you what, I’ve gone a large portion of my career riding relatively injury free … I’ve had almost 2,000 outs over 16 years, so I’m doing pretty good,” Moore said. “I’ve announced my retirement. New Year’s Eve at Loveland, Colo., will be my last one.”Besides his bull-riding reputation, Moore hopes his cowboy connections will help him build the CNCC rodeo program. Moore teaches bull riding through a school he puts on in Wyoming. He also has coached bull riding at the collegiate level at Laramie County Community College in Cheyenne.“We’ll have a lot of talented cowboys and a lot of high-end stock from five different states,” Moore said of this weekend’s bull-riding event.With his bull-riding career winding down, teaching and coaching have become Moore’s newest passion, which brought him to Rangely.“Being able to combine those two loves of my life (teaching and rodeoing) was a no brainer,” he said.Spectators at Sunday’s competition better hang on. Moore said they can expect to get a close-up look at what it’s like to ride a bull.“The bucking chutes will be set up right on the track in front of the grandstand,” Moore said. “It will be a rock ‘n’ roll show.”