Baker City steer wrestler Jesse Brown won the steer wrestling title at the Pendleton Round-Up on Sept. 14, 2024.

Jesse Brown of Baker City won the steer wrestling title at the Pendleton Round-Up with a total time of 18.3 seconds on three steers.

Brown won $7,552, which boosted him into seventh place in the PRCA standings.

Brown has won $105,601 this year.

He has all but locked up his fifth straight berth in rodeo’s biggest event, the National Finals Rodeo, a 10-night event in early December in Las Vegas.

The top 15 in money earnings qualify for the National Finals.

At the Round-Up, Brown finished third in the final round on Saturday, Sept. 14, with a time of 5.3 seconds, winning $874. Jace Melvin of Fort Pierre, South Dakota, was first with 4.9 seconds, and Dalton Massey of Hermiston was second at 5.1 seconds.

Massey finished one-tenth of a second behind Brown in the overall standings, at 18.4 seconds. He is the top-ranked steer wrestler this year, with earnings of $173,000.

Brown said in an interview in late August that the Round-Up is one of his favorite events. He was especially eager to compete this year after missing the event in 2023 due to an injury.

Brown set the arena record for steer wrestling in 2019.

Mike McGinn, a steer wrestler from Haines, is also in contention for a berth in the National Finals. He is ranked 30th in earnings.

Brown said in an interview in late August that his goal is to win a world championship, and he came very close in 2023.

His season earnings of $276,444 ranked third, behind only Massey ($283,993) and Tyler Waguespack of Gonzales, Louisiana, who earned $303,575.

In 2022 Brown was fifth in the world standings, with earnings of $241,152. That figure didn’t, however, include the $100,000 he won at a single event, The American in Arlington, Texas, on March 6, 2022.

Brown’s career

Brown, 32, a Baker City native who played football at Washington State University before transferring to Montana State, where he competed in team roping and earned a degree in business management, finished second in total time at the 2023 and 2022 National Finals. The season-ending event draws crowds of nearly 18,000 spectators at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas over 10 straight nights.

This year’s event is set for Dec. 5-14.

In the 2023 National Finals, Brown’s total time on 10 steers was 46.2 seconds, behind only Don Payne at 44.9 seconds. The second-place finish earned Brown a bonus of $63,889.

In the 2022 National Finals, Brown’s total time was 46.1 seconds. He won $60,159 for taking second.

Brown said in late August that he hoped to move up in the standings before the season’s final weeks later in September.

He knows how stressful the end of the season can be.

In late September 2020, just before he competed in his final rodeo in Texas, Brown was in 16th place, just $500 out of 15th and a berth in the National Finals.

He had to wait to find out how two other steer wrestlers did, competing in rodeos that day in other states.

When the numbers were finally tallied Brown had made it — by a margin of $1,650.

“When you’re close to 15th it’s kind of an uneasy feeling,” Brown said in 2020. “You don’t want to be on the other side of it.”

The next three years Brown avoided that level of anxiety, as he was well within the top 15, including second in season earnings in 2021.

The rodeo season is long and grueling. Brown competes in around 80 rodeos across the nation, driving tens of thousands of miles.

Sometimes, after driving all night, he has to mount his horse and get ready to deal with a quarter ton of uncooperative steer at 7 or 8 in the morning.

“It’s tough mentally and physically,” Brown said. “I try to run each steer like it can be the difference in the season.”

Brown said his 2024 season has been “up and down.”

He hasn’t sustained any serious injuries.

“It’s not been bad,” he said. “But I’d prefer to be in the top five.”