LAS VEGAS – Four years ago, Austin Beaty was sitting with his National Guard brigade in the United Arab Emirates, helping keep the Saudi Arabia/Qatar border secure, when he started thinking about his future and some of his passions in his life that he put aside to serve his country.
Beaty, 26 years old at the time, had placed his bull riding aspirations on the backburner nine years earlier when he decided to enlist in the National Guard after an injury at a rodeo shortly after graduating from Liberty High School left him wondering what he was going to do with his life.
As he sat there in the Middle East, Beaty began to think back to how, when he was 12 years old, he sold his PlayStation, a Go-kart, and everything else he had so that he could attend his first rodeo school 30 minutes from his house. Beaty grew up showing horses and participating in 4H, but he quickly became enthralled with bull riding. He would become a diehard PBR fan watching OLN whenever the toughest cowboys in the world were on television.
“That has been my life goal for the entirety of my life, since I could sit there cross-legged on the floor, watching TV all the way back in the day,” Beaty said. “I needed to be there. I wanted to be there.
“But can I be there?”
Beaty, the son of a Marine and Navy sailor, would stop pursuing his dream of attempting to ride at the PBR World Finals or Wrangler National Finals Rodeo once he enlisted, though.
Instead of celebrating his 18th birthday by purchasing his PBR card as so many aspiring bull riders do, an admittedly “scared to death” Beaty was preparing to be deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. His 19th birthday would be one of the “most frightening” days of his life, as he and his comrades were under severe mortar attack for half of the night.
“That’s when it was real to me,” Beaty, who is a Staff Sergeant in the sniper division for the Virginia National Guard, said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, this is real. This is a real thing. You could really die in war.’”
Gone were the goals of riding alongside the top bull riders in the world. The only objective was to protect his country and survive.
Even so, those dreams of riding on the sport’s biggest stage never left him as his military career continued to progress.
So there Beaty was in the United Arab Emirates in 2017, wondering if maybe there was a way that he still could attempt to pursue his passion while continuing to serve the country he loves.
“I was kind of having that little mid-life crisis, like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m wasting away God’s talent that he has seen fit to just allow me to have,’” Beaty recalls thinking. “I got in the gym, got super strong, got super fast, came home and hit it after that.”
Beaty began to enter local rodeos when he returned from deployment in the Middle East outside his active-duty requirements.
He would eventually go on to win the 2018 and 2020 First Frontier Circuit Finals (PRCA) year-end bull riding championships, but it wasn’t until this February that Beaty finally decided to spend $500 for his PBR card and take the plunge.
“My chain of command is pretty understanding,” Beaty said of balancing being active duty and pursuing a bull riding career. “They don’t really fight that. Obviously, it’s good attention, and we need that, especially in this retention crisis we’re having right now. If no one’s ever noticed that, we have kind of a retention crisis Army-wide. They’re pretty understanding, and this is a part of who I was before I joined the military, so let’s just continue that tradition and show that continuity of who makes up your force. Obviously, you want that to be the same person that came in. There’s some honor about it.
“If it’s going to bring positive light to someone else’s dream, too – because that’s why I didn’t think that I belonged here, because I had other obligations, and I don’t want somebody to feel that way. Man, if you’ve got the moxie to get on your barrel every day, to work out like you’re supposed to, and to still be effective at your other job, do it.”
Beaty will now get the ultimate chance to pull off his childhood dream and qualify for the PBR World Finals this weekend as the 30-year-old is set to compete at the 2021 Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour Finals courtesy of his win at the Wheeling Invitational on Oct. 8.
The easiest pathway for Beaty to qualify for the PBR World Finals will be by finishing in the Top 2 of the event average this weekend at the South Point Arena & Equestrian Center.
Beaty has drawn Tulsa Time (0-0) for Round 1, which begins at 9:30 p.m. ET on RidePass on Pluto TV.
This weekend is only Beaty’s fifth PBR event of his career. He could not hit the PBR schedule as hard as he initially hoped this summer because he finally got accepted to, and later graduated from, the Army’s sniper school.
“For years, I’d been trying to go into sniper school, and that was kind of my summer run,” Beaty said. “I couldn’t say no to that. That’s a milestone.”
A few months later, and Beaty checked off another item for his bucket list.
Beaty made his Unleash The Beast debut in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Oct. 23, going 0-for-2 and receiving a standing ovation from the Nebraska faithful.
He was so honored by the reaction, but he hopes he can get the same cheer for making the 8-second mark this week in Las Vegas and be praised for what he is accomplishing in the arena.
“I solely just want to be remembered for the things that I could do and be dedicated to in the rodeo world,” Beaty said. “Obviously, I’m so proud of my service. I’m proud of my service, and I’m proud that I got to serve and be a servant of this nation, but (the PBR World Finals) is what I’ve wanted since I was a kid. And I’ll gladly pick up the rifle and go to war any day that I need to because that’s necessary for this society to keep moving forward and to progress, but this is what I want, and selfishly, I’m going to go after it.”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko
Photo courtesy of Andre Silva/Bull Stock Media