The Fresno State Bulldoggers club rodeo team will host the Fresno State College Rodeo Friday and Saturday, March 29 and 30, at the Coarsegold Rodeo Grounds (44777 Rodeo Grounds Lane) in Coarsegold.
The team’s only local event of the season opens from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, March 29. The slack round, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 30, will feature the remaining competitors in opening action in the 10 men’s and women’s events.
The top 10 combined qualifiers from the first two rounds will compete in the championship round from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 30.
Admission is $15 for each evening session, $10 for Fresno State students with a campus ID and free to youth ages 5 and younger. Saturday morning’s slack session is free to the public.
Fresno State women’s and men’s teams currently second and fifth, respectively, in the region after five events held in the fall and spring.
Graduate student McKenna Wood (Hollister) is the highest ranked Bulldog in the West Coast Region individual rankings and ranks second in the team roping header category. MBA student Hailey Wilbur (Lodi) follows in fourth place in goat tying among the 10 men’s and women’s events.
Three other Fresno State students also rank top five in their respective events – sophomore Tyler Jones (saddle bronc, fifth), junior Kendall Patterson (breakaway roping, fifth) and freshman Maddie Biglow (goat tying, fifth).
After this weekend, the team looks ahead to two more trips to complete the regular season schedule at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo (April 12-13) and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (May 9-10).
The top two men’s and women’s teams from each region earn automatic invitations to the College National Finals Rodeo in Casper, Wyoming, June 9-15.
Students ranked top three in their events can also qualify individually from the 11 regions across the nation.
Jones (Friant) was a College National Finals Rodeo qualifier in team roping in 2023, and Wilbur (Lodi) qualified in the breakaway event in 2022.
The team is coached by Uhuru Adem, a two-time, collegiate national finals saddle bronc qualifier, for Fresno State. He guided the men’s team to a 13th-place finish in 2022 (its highest finish in recent memory), and the women’s team also placed 19th that same season.
The program started in 1946 and officially became a club in 1949 — the same year the first collegiate national finals were held in San Francisco.
More information on the team is available at its Facebook and Instagram pages.
