ST. LOUIS – When Devon Weaver was a kid, his friends collected all kinds of baseball cards.
Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols were just some of the names Weaver’s friends were likely talking about and trying to find cards of.
Those weren’t the names, though, that Weaver was focused on.
Weaver’s heroes were cowboys such as Clint Branger, Charlie Sampson, Terry Don West, Ted Nuce, Tuff Hedeman and Troy Dunn.
It was bull riders like them – tough, old school and gritty athletes – that Weaver aspired to be.
“When most kids were collecting Hot Wheels and baseball cards, I was collecting bull riding tapes and rodeo tapes,” Weaver said.
Weaver is set to compete at Saturday night’s Pendleton Whisky Velocity Tour event in Worcester, Massachusetts, as he continues his pursuit of qualifying for his first PBR World Finals.
The No. 39-ranked bull rider in the world is the second-highest ranked rider set to compete at the DCU Center (RidePass, 6:45 p.m. ET).
The 27-year-old grew up 350 miles away in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is far from a bull riding hotbed.
However, Weaver was introduced to the Western lifestyle by his father, Donnie, and uncle, Don. Donnie was an aficionado of the cowboy code and would often watch Western movies or rodeos on TV.
Devon would watch the Mesquite Championship Rodeo with his father, and slowly bull riding became quite the interest to little Devon.
He started asking for any VHS tape or DVD his parents could get their hands on for him. Devon would scour the concession stands at the annual Harrisburg rodeos or bull ridings in an attempt to find more videos of some of his heroes, and he made it a habit to record old PBR broadcasts when the bull riding organization was on TNN.
“There was something about it that just drew my attention to it,” Devon said. “I just fell in love with it. The older I got, the more the love of the sport increased. It is funny how that it is. It caught my attention and something told me I had to do this.”
Weaver attempted his first steer when he was 13 years old after a family friend caught wind of Devon’s love for the sport. There was a small practice pen nearby in Harrisburg, and Devon was invited to give the sport a go.
Of course, Devon lasted barely one jump before ending up underneath the bovine. He was hooked, though.
“I had seen it in person a handful of times, but I never been up close to see it,” Devon recalled. “It really opened my eyes, and there was something about it that said, ‘This is the real deal. This is going to really happen. Either you are all, in or you are not in at all.’ That is my motto. If I am going to attempt something or do something, I am in it all the way.
“As I walked out of that arena and my dad took me home, I made that decision saying, ‘Well, I can do this as a career and make a lifestyle or living out of it, or I can just be that loudmouth kid talking smack to everybody saying I am going to be the best World Champion bull rider.’ I went with option A, and here we are today.”
Weaver is on the cusp of cracking the Top 30 of the PBR world standings. The No. 39-ranked bull rider trails No. 35 Troy Wilkinson by 4.5 points.
Also competing in Worcester are No. 37 Amadeu Campos Silva, No. 45 Andrew Alvidrez, No. 48 Paulo Lima, No. 49 Tye Chandler, No. 53 Venn Johns, and 2019 PBR World Finals qualifier Leandro Machado.
RELATED: Worcester daysheet
Weaver has drawn 344 Blue Print for Round 1 and is 3-for-8 at all levels of competition. He made his Unleash The Beast debut two weeks ago at Iron Cowboy, bucking off Buck Wild in 7.5 seconds.
For the last nine years, Weaver has competed professionally – and at sometimes sporadically – but he is committed to finally reaching the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas (Nov. 4-8) in 2020.
Weaver said it was hard to find opportunities at times to find bulls to get on in the Harrisburg region, but he never gave up on his dream.
He would continue to practice and travel wherever he could to find an amateur event or open bull riding to compete at.
“I would say pure dedication and focus and will for trying to reach that goal helped more than anything,” Weaver said. “I wasn’t going to let growing up in an inner city stop me from doing something that I want to do or something I love. If you really love something, and you are really passionate about something, you find a way to achieve it.
“Bull riding has kept me away from negative things that go on in the inner city and stuff. In a way, this sport protected me pretty much my entire life through a lot of situations and decisions. It kept me more occupied than anything.”
Weaver connected with one of his idols – Charlie Sampson – last year at a small bull riding in Pennsylvania. Weaver had just gotten done riding in Archdale, North Carolina, and decided stop at another bull riding on the way home.
Sampson was judging the small bull riding and came away impressed with Weaver, who he had never seen before.
The two struck up a friendship, and Sampson will often offer up coaching to Weaver whenever he sends him videos or posts them on social media.
Weaver and Sampson were able to catch up once again in person at Iron Cowboy in Los Angeles when Weaver made his debut on the PBR’s grand stage.
Weaver said he was happy to see Sampson be honored as one of the sport’s greatest entertainers on dirt in Los Angeles by the PBR, and that Sampson is one of many African-American pioneers that should be recognized and celebrated throughout the country during Black History Month.
“It is very important,” Weaver said. “Guys like Charlie and other great athletes that set that bar for us black athletes, or whatever you are, those guys were courageous. Men and women. To break the barrier and to go after something that, how many people say you can’t do it or not even allow you to do it? Those people set the bar and let us know anything is possible.
“You don’t have to be black or white. You should just judge that person by their character and say, ‘Wow, they didn’t let any negativity stop them from doing something they wanted to do or reaching a goal they wanted to reach.’ I felt like you should just admire that more than anything. Try to imitate that in a way. Don’t let the naysayers keep you down because you are doing something they can’t reach or they can’t do. Be that person because in 5, 10, 15 years later you might have a little kid looking up and saying, ‘I want to just be like you.’”
Follow Justin Felisko on Twitter @jfelisko