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Welcome to Old West on East Coast

Thursday, Aug. 3, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo bill ryan⁄the gazette Edward Johnson, of West Friendship, gets tossed in the air by a rampaging cow during Saturday’s rodeo at the J Bar W Ranch in Johnsville.

It’s rolling cornfields and tree-covered hills only vaguely compare to the vast expanses of the Mountain West in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming and even Alberta, Canada.

Its people still live in earshot of Baltimore, Washington and Harrisburg, and are influenced daily by the forces of the metropolitan East Coast.

But at the J Bar W Ranch in Johnsville, bull riding has found a home away from home for nearly a decade.

And on nights like Saturday at the PBR Sonny Williams Classic, when crowds fill the bleachers, riders man the stables, and the smells of pulled pork, French fries and live cattle seep through the muggy the air, it might as well be the Rocky Mountain foothills.

And run by Sonny and Lisa Williams, and their dad Johnny, the ranch has come to embody the dreams of other locals, while showcasing some of the best riders the country has to offer several times a summer.

After graduating from Middletown High in 1991, and knowing Sonny from 4-H competition, Blaine Whipp and Eddie Winfield found themselves with time on their hands and in need of excitement. And thus, like Sonny, who first started riding on his own in 1989, they started to get on bulls.

‘‘We were friends,” said Winfield, a slim, unimposing figure with dark hair and eyes. ‘‘And when he started doing it, we were like ‘hey, man, let’s try that.’ We were young and dumb. I got on and they talked me into it, and I started winning and it was great.”

Sonny had some success on the national circuit, but battled injuries after the mid-1990s and turned his efforts toward bringing professional events to the ranch in Johnsville. In 2001, he created the International Bull Riders circuit to help riders on the East Coast have a place to compete. They now come to the J Bar W Ranch twice a month in the summer. And since 2004, his name has graced this weekend’s annual PBR Enterprise Tour event.

But Winfield and Whipp, both 33, are still riding.

Winfield is battling an injury and won’t likely return until December. Whipp, on the other hand, rode well enough to advance to the championship round Saturday.

And like Winfield, Whipp can point to Williams and the J Bar W as an essential starting point for his career, which has now extended into owning bulls.

‘‘Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a cowboy,” said Whipp, whose stubbly and chiseled face look the part. ‘‘But I never grew up in Texas or Oklahoma or anything. I was just kind of looking for something to get into.”

Whipp and Winfield say they stumbled into bull riding. But the truth is, no riders without heart and grit can survive in the business.

There are obvious physical risks, which often become so frequent or repeated that riders are forced to retire

‘‘I’m getting toward the end, just because I’ve broken so much stuff,” Winfield said, whose broken bones list easily climbs into double digits. ‘‘But as long as your body can do it. As long as you want to do it.”

The physical risk is what jumps out at casual fans as well. But the financial peril can be more jarring.

At Saturday’s competition, entry alone cost $355, not to mention costs for accommodations and travel, which riders also cover. At Saturday’s event, only a quarter of the contestants returned home with any prize money at all.

Good riders are often fueled by the do-or-die economic nature of the sport. And as Justin Shue has found out, sometimes taking a day job to add a sense of financial insurance can hurt a rider’s focus.

‘‘I figured when I had a check coming in, it would take pressure off me,” said Shue, who just recently took a job as a steel worker because he and his wife Jennifer are expecting a child in two weeks. ‘‘I’ll tell you what, this has been the worst series I’ve had so far.”

Shue didn’t make it eight seconds in the preliminary round, the time a rider needs to stay on the bull to qualify for a score. But there’s no griping.

‘‘Money goes down pretty quick sometimes,” Jennifer said. ‘‘He’s just got to hang in there. There’s really nothing you can do about it.”

In a sport where high risk is just accepted, family is a common theme.

It’s for that reason that Debbie Williams, Sonny’s mom, has used the summer IBR and PBR competitions as a venue to raise money for the Patty Pollatos Fund, named in memory of a friend who died of cancer

‘‘It’s just a safe place to have fun and fellowship,” Debbie said.

The Patty Pollatos fund receives partial proceeds from the regularly scheduled IBR events and is the sole beneficiary of this past Saturday’s PBR event. And with the proceeds, the foundation will scatter donations among several worthy charitable organizations — and also, the Rice family.

Noah Rice, 5, is a typical kid Saturday night, crouched by the railing scooping gravel into a pile with his hands. But because of complications from hypoplastic left heart syndrome, he is in need of a transplant. And his family is in need of help paying the $100,000 insurance co-pay for the operation.

‘‘A lot of people asked for us,” said Ike Rice, Noah’s father. ‘‘We weren’t really ready to ask for any help just yet, because we weren’t sure what the insurance was going to cover.”

After hearing the Rice’s story in the Frederick News-Post, Debbie Williams has become one of those people. And the Sonny Williams Classic and the Patty Pollatos fund has become one of the tools.

‘‘I do this to honor Patty, and to glorify my Heavenly Father,” Williams said. ‘‘I have to tell it the way it is. We know it has the hands of God in it, because you can’t just raise over $3 million the way this little organization has done.”

In some circles, Williams might be stepping on some toes with her talk of religion. But at an event where the Cowboy’s prayer precedes the action, it fits.

After all, making a living by riding a bull takes a lot of blind faith too.