Jaw Dropping Performances Start to Finish in Toughest San Antonio Bracket Yet

The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo is well underway and nearly finished with the bracket competition. See who took the top honors in Bracket No. 4.

Kaleb Driggers turns a steer at the 2025 Governor's Cup in Sioux Falls, South Dakota | Nathan Meyers Photography

The San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo uses a tournament-style format with entirely different rules from the last and the next. It is always hard to keep up with the rules, but important to understand as the rodeo moves forward.

If a fan wanted to watch elite talent from athlete No.1 to athlete No.10, this was the bracket to be in attendance at.

The highest scores of the rodeo in both the bucking horse events were recorded, while the fastest times in the breakaway roping, steer wrestling, and team roping were clocked out of the boxes.

Ty Erickson competes in the steer wrestling at the 2025 NFR in Las Vegas | Ty Erickson

Bracket 4's Cinderella Story has to come from the barrel racer Anita Ellis who ran down the alley at a rodeo for the first time since her brain injury that kept her from traveling to Las Vegas last December. If someone wants to follow the ultimate comeback story in 2026, pay attention to Ellis.

This was by far the hardest set of girls to earn a check in for the barrel racing, as there was never more than 3-tenths of a second between first and fourth, with some of the fastest runs of the rodeo.

The final round had 7-hundredths of a second between first and fifth. For context, Kathy Grimes won a round in another bracket by more than 7-TENTHS. A massive difference.

Other Bracket Four Highlights

Statler Wright spurs a bucking horse to his first gold buckle in 2025 at the Thomas & Mack arena. | PRCA Photo by Roseanna Sales

There hadn't been a 90-point ride in the saddle bronc riding until the reigning world champion Statler Wright nodded his head in Bracket 4, which nearly ensured his spot in the semi-finals in his quest for another gold buckle.

Down in the big man's event, the steer wrestling, it was Ty Erickson who was nearly impossible to beat. Once the final steer wrestler had gone in round three, 120 had nodded their heads amongst the four brackets.

Of those 120, there are five total sub-4.0-second runs. Erickson has two of them. But that isn't where the highlight reels stop for this set of athletes, as the team ropers, with the same time parameters as the bull doggers, they own two of the five fastest runs of the entire rodeo.

Breakaway roper Bailey Bates knew she needed a round win in order to advance, and she did so in an unfathomable fashion. She stopped the clock at 1.6 seconds and that was just one-tenth of a second from setting a new arena record.

San Antonio's Format

For those who don't know, this rodeo is set up in five different brackets where contestants each get three chances to compete with a clean slate every time they enter the arena. There are 10 competitors in each bracket, and four from each advance onto their designated semi-finals based on money won.

However, this one is formatted quite differently after a bracket finishes, as contestants take the money won into the semis, the wild card, and then into the finals. This is the lone tournament-style rodeo that does this.

Therefore, if someone was a part of a tougher bracket, like this one, they are possibly in an uphill climb the rest of the way. It is going to be a fight to the very finish, and every single dollar counts.