Guiton went through neurological evaluations, specialist appointments and additional testing before doctors determined the tiny area of his brain still healing had fully recovered. He eventually returned with no greater medical risk than the next bull rider climbing into the chutes.

And when he finally started getting on practice bulls again, the feel was still there.

That almost made what came next harder.

Guiton could ride at home. He could ride in practice. He could feel everything working.

Then the games started.

And he could not buy eight seconds.

There had always been emotion in Guiton’s buckoffs. He is known to crash out a little — a burst of anger, frustration spilling over before he resets and tries again.

After about the seventh one, the anger disappeared.

It turned into anguish.

There were tears behind the bucking chutes. Moments when he buried his head against the fence. Moments when everybody around the Carolina Cowboys could see exactly how badly the kid wanted to do his job and exactly how much it was eating at him that he could not.

Still, Davis kept writing his name into the lineup.

Again.

And again.

And again.

“There’s no backup in him,” Davis said. “I know that he’s gonna give it everything he’s got every time.”

The irony was impossible to miss when the Cowboys arrived in Austin.

One year earlier at Gambler Days, Guiton had come to town tied with Daniel Keeping for the longest consecutive ride streak in PBR Teams history at 10.

Back then, the question was whether anybody could get Clay G off a bull.

This year, the question was whether he could stay on one.

Saturday night inside Moody Center seemed ready to provide the answer.

Guiton started well aboard Rankenstein. For a moment, everything looked right.

Then, almost as if it simply was not meant to happen yet, he came flying off.

Another one. Nine straight.

By Sunday morning, there was nothing left to do but show back up.

So Guiton went to church.

Cowboy Church, specifically.

Not in a chapel or anywhere far removed from the arena, but in a hallway inside Moody Center barely half a football field from the dirt where the Cowboys would ride an hour later.

That is where Tiffany Davis — Miss Tiff to the Carolina Cowboys — holds church on Sunday mornings, speaking what could best be described as redneck while Bruno Zecchin stands nearby translating the message into Portuguese for the Brazilian riders.

That morning, her sermon involved monkeys and a golf course.

The monkeys had taken over the greens and fairways, picking up golf balls and dropping them somewhere else. People tried building a fence to stop them.

It did not work.

Eventually, there was only one solution.

Play the ball where the monkey puts it. Forget wishing for a better lie. Forget obsessing over how the ball got there.

This is where it is.

Hit it.

For a bull rider who had spent the past month wondering why everything that worked at home stopped working under arena lights, the message landed.

“That’s what I needed to hear,” Guiton said later. “That really stuck with me today, what Miss Tiff was talking about in church. Exactly what we needed to hear.”

By the time he arrived on the dirt for the final game of Gambler Days, something felt different.

“I knew today was going to be the day,” he said. “I woke up with that feeling. Today I just felt like Clay G.”

Then Carolina started riding bulls.

Thiago Salgado went first against the hometown Austin Gamblers.

Davis had wanted something solid to begin the game. Instead, Salgado made Baylor’s Bandit look spectacular, exploding out of the gate for 90.80 points.

“Badass Baby T.”

The Carolina chutes were alive.

Across the arena, three-time PBR World Champion Jose Vitor Leme answered with 88.75 points on Mayor of Hogeye.

Then Guilherme Valleiras covered Pale Face for 87.25.

Austin’s Dener Barbosa responded with 86.90 points aboard J Lazy S.

Nobody had hit the dirt yet.

And now the Carolina Cowboys needed Clay Guiton.

A bull named Outlaw was standing in the chute.

His name was stamped on a Carolina blue ear tag.

“Tell him to bust him,” Marco Rizzo yelled.

“Bust him,” Salgado shouted at Clay.

Outlaw was not unknown. Salgado had been on him. Jess Lockwood had been on him. Carolina’s coaches had studied the bull and watched his recent outs turn to the right.

That should have put him directly into Guiton’s riding hand.

Perfect.

Except Outlaw did not follow the script.

He went away from Guiton’s hand.

A month earlier, maybe Guiton would have tightened up.

Davis had seen it happen. At home, his young rider moved his feet and reacted. In the games, Guiton had been trying so hard to make something happen that his body would clamp down.

“Here at home he looks like a champ,” Davis said. “When we get him here, it seems like he just tries too hard and overdoes and clamps and don’t move.”

Not Sunday.

“He didn't clamp, and he started firing from both ends,” Davis said.

8 seconds later he had a qualified ride for 87.45.

Qualified ride. Finally.

Guiton jumped off Outlaw and landed on his feet.

Then the month came pouring out of him.

He screamed.

And screamed again.

And kept screaming.

His cries of relief nearly competed with the noise coming from the Moody Center crowd.

It sounded less like a celebration than an exorcism — nine buckoffs, the tears behind the chutes, the frustration, the doubts and every time he had walked back to the locker room knowing he had not done his job all leaving his chest at once.

The Carolina bucking chutes erupted with him.

Hats flew into the arena.

Rizzo was perched on the side of the bucking chutes like a spider monkey the whole ride.

“GO TO HIM, CLAY G!”

Tiffany was supposed to be filming.

Technically, she did.

Her iPad captured approximately 1.2 seconds of useful game film.

Then Guiton made it to 2 seconds in frame and the camera shot straight toward her feet while she jumped up and down screaming for him.

Everybody had wanted this ride for Clay.

Clay wanted it more.

He climbed back toward the chutes and found Rizzo for a fist bump.

Then he started toward the locker room.

Tiffany caught him before he disappeared.

She grabbed his face with both hands.

It was something she had done over and over during the previous month after the buckoffs — almost like a mother making him stop long enough to look her in the eyes, reminding him who he was and telling him she was proud of him regardless of the result.

This time, there was finally a qualified ride behind it.

Guiton had played the ball where the monkey put it.

And Carolina had the lead.

“The ol’ Carolina scoop and score,” Rizzo called it.

The Cowboys never gave it back.

Austin’s perfect start ended when Kaique Pacheco bucked off Tankums in 4.28 seconds for the second day in a row.

Then Carolina sent Keyshawn Whitehorse into a heavyweight matchup with reigning YETI PBR World Champion Bull Ransom.

Whitehorse brought the same energy he had carried over the chutes all weekend, fighting through Ransom for 81.35 points and Carolina’s fourth consecutive qualified ride.

Davis had seen it coming before Whitehorse ever nodded his head.

“I could just see the eye of the tiger in Keyshawn,” he said. “He was all about it.”

Whitehorse’s energy, Davis said, changes the Cowboys.

“It’s a game changer for our team. It’s a game changer for Keyshawn, and that stuff’s priceless.”

Vinicius Pinheiro Correa came down for Austin.

Ezekiel Mitchell finally ended Carolina’s perfect afternoon when he bucked off Chico.

Callum Miller received a re-ride after his first matchup with Stacked Deck, but could not convert against High Road.

Carolina 346.85.

Austin 175.65.

Four rides on five bulls.

A dominant win over the hometown Gamblers.

The Cowboys improved to 9-5, remaining one game behind league-leading Nashville and tied with Missouri in the standings.

But the number everybody in blue seemed happiest about was one.

Clay Guiton finally had one.

“Man, we’ve all been with Clay, and we know how bad he wants it,” Davis said. “That bull today goes away from his hand and gets him stuck, and that’s a big deal. We was pumped after that.

The coach had never quit believing.

Not after five buckoffs. Not after seven. Not after nine.

Carolina has too many talented bull riders for any coach to blindly hand away lineup spots, and Guiton knew it.

“It’s hard too with the amount of good guys that we’ve got to keep me in the games when you’re not doing your job,” he said. “But they knew what I was capable of, and finally got it going in the right direction again.”

There was something almost perfectly Austin about it.

A year earlier, Guiton arrived chasing history.

On Sunday in 2025, he bucked off with a chance to break Keeping’s record.

On Sunday in 2026, he arrived chasing something much simpler.

Eight long seconds.

“Crazy things happen on Sundays in Austin for me,” Guiton said. “Last year it was fell off to break the record, and this year I stayed on to — I don’t even know how many I bucked off of in a row.

“Two total different sides of the equation the last two years in Austin for sure.”

After Carolina cleared the dirt and the noise began to settle, Tiffany found a quiet moment of her own.

Underneath the stairs leading to the chute deck, in front of an ARIAT sign, she dropped down.

From a distance, it almost looked like she was praying to the boot gods.

But she was looking a little higher than that.

After preaching that morning about accepting where the monkey dropped the golf ball, Miss Tiff bowed her head and offered another prayer — this one most likely with gratitude for five cowboys who had made it through another afternoon, for an opportunity to do what they loved and, especially, for one young bull rider who had finally found his way through eight seconds again.

Then she found Clay.

And hugged him.

Inside the Carolina locker room, Davis wanted his Cowboys to remember exactly what the day felt like.

“That’s what it’s supposed to be like,” he told them. “That’s bull riding. That’s the sh*t we live for right there.”

The Cowboys were sore. They were beat up.

They also had just ridden four of five bulls against the home team and produced the kind of fire Davis had been looking for.

“Let’s don’t forget what it’s about,” he told them. “Let’s feed off of this.”

Then came the message he wanted carrying them out of Austin.

“This right here makes you elite.”

Cooper Davis felt it too.

For the first time this season, he told the room, it felt like the championship team again — the intensity, the fire and the feeling Carolina carried when it won it all in Las Vegas.

Before everybody scattered for a week away from competition, Robson Palermo simplified the assignment.

“Now go ride five.”

Baby T got his flowers for the 90-pointer.

“Baby T is badass.”

The room laughed.

Then heads bowed.

“Heavenly Father, thank you for the opportunities today,” the prayer began. “Thank you for allowing these guys to go out there and to showcase all their talent for you.”

Sunday had started with a lesson about monkeys moving golf balls.

It ended with Carolina moving back toward the top of the standings.

Somewhere in between, Outlaw went the wrong direction, Clay Guiton moved his feet anyway and eight seconds finally went his way.

For nine consecutive bulls, Guiton had been searching for the version of himself everybody else could still see.

Sunday morning, he woke up feeling like Clay G again.

Sunday afternoon, the rest of Moody Center saw that version too.

Photo courtesy of Bull Stock Media