Middlebury native Mast heading to PBR World Finals

May 10—A total of 40 bull riders will be competing for the world championship over the next 10 days.

Middlebury's Marcus Mast will be one of them.

Mast will look to bring home the sport's top prize starting Friday at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Professional Bull Riders World Finals, which is contested on the league's Unleash The Beast circuit, will last until May 21. There will be seven days of competition across that span, with riders going from May 12-15 and then the 18-21. Action begins at 8:45 p.m. ET each day, except for the final one, which starts at 1:45 p.m. ET.

"It's pretty awesome," said Mast of advancing to the World Finals. "It's been a short, but long season. I think everybody's had their ups-and-downs along the season. I had to be on the sideline for a couple of weeks here and there, and so I obviously didn't get to where I wanted to be. But we made it in, and it's not over yet."

Heading into this year's Finals, Mast is ranked 40th in the world rankings. He has scored 146.5 points on the Unleash The Beast tour this year, which began back in late November in Tucson, Arizona. Kaique Pacheco from Brazil enters the Finals at the top of the standings with 980 points.

Mast missed about a five-week stretch from mid-December to late January, as well as two weeks at the end of February. His best finish so far this season on the UTB circuit was a seventh-place showing at the Ty Murray Invitational March 24 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

"We get points per round, and then per aggregate on where you finish at," Mast explained. "If you, obviously, fall off all your bulls and you don't get a score on the board, you're not going to get any points."

This is the second time Mast has qualified for the World Finals. He also did so in 2020, with the event being held in November that year and in front of a smaller crowd due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That will make this week's World Finals the biggest crowd Mast has competed in during his career.

"That was far enough past all the COVID stuff to where they were starting to let some people back in," recalled Mast of the 2020 event. "I think they were allowed to sell 50 or 60 percent of the seating, so it wasn't packed."

Being this is just the second time he'll be competing at the World Finals, Mast understands how much hard work it takes to get to this point.

"You can't just go to the highest level and stay there and just get to the world finals by being there every week," Mast said. "You've still got a job to do, and you've still got to ride your bulls. ... There are always 34 other guys that are going to be scratching and clawing to try take your spot or try and stay ahead of you, so you always have to keep up your end of the deal as well."

Mast was born and raised Amish until he was 16 years old. It was at that point where he saw some of his friends riding bulls, and it was something he wanted to get into. Mast then decided to leave the Amish lifestyle and pursue the sport.

"You don't have no Amish people riding bulls normally," Mast joked.

Mast pointed out, though, that his upbringing did help him start a career in bull riding.

"It's kind of the same concept of riding horses, especially if you're training horses that are bucking and whatnot," Mast said. "Riding horses bareback is one of the best things you can do to train for this. It's all kind of come with it."

His first win of any kind in the PBR came in 2019, winning the Rainsville Bull Bash on one of the organization's smaller circuits.

One of the highlights for Mast came last year as part of the Challenger Series. Competing in front of his hometown area fans at the Michiana Events Center in Shipshewana, Mast took home the championship across the multi-day event. The victory netted him more than $13,000 in winnings as well.

"It's always an awesome deal, getting to be that close to home," Mast said. "I currently live in Howe, and so a hop, skip and a jump, and I'm there. I've won second place there before and I had never gotten to win it overall until last year. I was finally able to pull through and win it, and it sure got me pretty speechless."

Mast has a total of nine victories as a professional bull rider. He's earned more than $185,000 in his career as well.

Even though he'll have a lot of work to do in order to win this year's World Finals, Mast knows anything can happen.

"We've got eight more rounds, and anything can happen in eight rounds," Mast said. "... Basically, just try and take it one bull at a time. That's the biggest thing. You take it one bull at a time and try and focus on the one you've got at-hand and not get ahead of yourself. It doesn't matter if you're leading the aggregate; you've just got to stick to the basics and ride one bull at a time because you can't ride the second one before you rode the first one."

Austin Hough can be reached at austin.hough@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2360. Follow him on Twitter at @AustinHoughTGN.