Meet Florida's first professional rodeo team

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Florida now has its first professional rodeo team, the Florida Freedom, and this weekend, they're competing at home for the first time. Alyssa Ramos of member station WLRN in Miami met some of the bull riders.

ALYSSA RAMOS, BYLINE: Florida has always been a hub for all types of sports. We've got cricket, pickleball, ice hockey and now...

(SOUNDBITE OF AIR HORN)

RAMOS: ...Bull riding.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's something different. Someone's definitely got to experience it.

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: We're going to get everything set for John Crimber.

RAMOS: John Crimber has been riding bull since he was 6. Now 18, he competes professionally as part of the Florida Freedom. He and his teammates met for the first time at a recent training event in South Florida.

JOHN CRIMBER: Rode a nice bull, and just a good tune up, I think, for just the next couple weeks. We're going to keep getting on bulls, but it's good to get on here in the home state of the team and try to get a rolling here.

RAMOS: The team will get the ball rolling by giving Florida a spot on the Professional Bull Riders league, or PBR. A South Florida hedge fund investor bought the team via Oklahoma. Generally, bull riding is an individual sport, but the PBR brings together some of the best riders in the world to compete against each other in groups. Paulo Crimber, John's father, is the head coach and a 10-time PBR World Finals qualifier.

PAULO CRIMBER: Bull riding's a great life. You get to travel, see different places, meet different people and doing what you love. That's not really a job. It's more like a way of life.

RAMOS: Bull riding is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world. The rules seem straightforward. Stay on the bull, right? But you have to hold on with one hand for eight seconds. The rider can't touch the bull with their free hand. And judges score their performance based on details like balance, control and even the difficulty of the bull. Trey Benton is the oldest writer on the team at 32.

TREY BENTON: Fans cheering for you, that crowd, that rush. That's a memory that hasn't faded, which is why I'm still riding. When that dies, then a guy needs to get out before he gets hurt.

RAMOS: Benton, as well as Paul (ph) and John Crimber, know all about injuries.

BENTON: I've broken my face.

P CRIMBER: I broke my neck.

J CRIMBER: I broke my eye socket. We know it's going to be a dangerous sport, but we just can't be afraid of that, you know. We go out there, and we lay our lives on line. It's just - we love doing it.

RAMOS: Out of the 12 members on the team, more than half are Brazilian, and so is coach Crimber. He came to the U.S. more than 20 years ago.

P CRIMBER: You know, it's soccer and bull riding that's the most popular kind of sports in Brazil, and that's why it's so many coming over to the United States and riding the PBR and try to make a better life.

RAMOS: That's why Elizmar Jeremias joined the team. He grew up in a family of bull riders back in Brazil.

ELIZMAR JEREMIAS: (Non-English language spoken).

RAMOS: He says getting on a bull for the first time was the hardest part. But since that moment, he fell in love with it. The Florida Freedom hope to attract an audience in South Florida because of its large population from Latin America, where several countries have a rodeo culture. The team will put that to the test this weekend as they compete in their first PBR competition in their home state. For NPR News, I'm Alyssa Ramos in Miami. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.