Reese Cates is emerging as star...

Everybody experiences their first World Finals in different ways and I remember my rookie year at the NFR was something I had been dreaming about for 18 years. I was thinking about it, working at it and I couldn't wait to get there.

I was so excited to be there that I didn't feel the pressure. I just felt the excitement and it seems that's how Reese Cates feels.

He's just so thrilled to be here and I think he's putting an exclamation point on the Rookie of the Year race and that race is a big deal. I know that every rookie, since the beginning of time, wants to win the Rookie of the Year.

I know it was really important to me.

It's a great title and for a young guy to come onto the scene and be around the greats, guys that are in their prime and for Reese to be here there is no bigger competition. There is not a higher place that you can ride. He's going against the very best guys on the very best bulls. He's ridden four out of five and as a tenth of a second away from being five for five.

It's fun to watch how excited he is and he's putting it to good use.

This is part of the circle of life. We're watching Justin McBride retire. We're watching Adriano Moraes retire. They're the two guys that own a third of the titles that have been won in the PBR. Now we're seeing Guilherme Marchi and J.B. Mauney take over the reigns and we're seeing the next generation of stars already start to emerge and right now I think you would start that list with Reese Cates.

But you have to put into perspective.

The thing of it is when I was riding I always tried to treat it like 8 big one-headers. You've got to keep our focus and your goals real short.

His focus – it sounds like he understands this – today need to be the bull he has and then it needs to be even shorter than that. I tried to keep my focus to jump by jump. Meet the situations as they arise, figure them out and do whatever it takes to overcome them.

At this level, that comes jump by jump not day by day or event by event and definitely not title by title. It literally comes jump by jump. To me, keeping your focus that short-sighted is what is going to get you to whatever your long term goals might be.

In other words, all the teams at the beginning of the NFL season want to win the Super Bowl, but the team that goes out the very first game of the season – they're kicking off or receiving – the first play of the first game of the season and the team that can focus on that play over and over and over and over again all year long – focus on the second play, focus on how many yards they have – those are the guys, to me, that end up going to and probably winning the Super Bowl.

None of that is going to come into play if you're not taking care of those challenges that arise incrementally.

You can jump out there and have a bull jump into your hand and have a perfect seat and all of a sudden he stumbles and changes directions and your focus has to be overcoming the stumbling, direction change and then it has to be that stutter step and that really high kick or whatever it is you have to be in that moment.

As a bull rider you're going to face ups and downs and that's where I think it works to keep your focus narrow like that. I don't even know if narrow is the right word, but you can't let lows drag you down. Your job as a professional athlete is to keep your performance at optimum level.

Everybody is going to experience highs and lows.

Right now Reese is experiencing quite a high, but the bull he has tonight does not care and doesn't know about it situation. That's what it comes down to.

For instance, J.B. is not really competing against Guilherme nor is Guilherme competing against J.B. because unlike other sports they have no impact on the outcome of the other guy's performance. There's no offense and defense so in a perfect world – if I'm competing against Guilherme – I want him to have his best day and my day's better than his.

You're competing against and with the bull at the same time and that's it. You can't have an affect on the bull and so the only thing you can affect is yourself. That's like when I was riding and I had a bull that wasn't as good or whatever that didn't affect me if I knew I squeezed every drop out of him that I could get. If I did that I was successful whether I was first or 31st – it didn't matter – as long as I knew I did the best I could with the bull that I had.

That's all you can do and it doesn't matter where you end up. You're going to end up where you end up so long as you know every time you were giving the opportunity you did your job--and that's all you can do.