PUEBLO, Colo. – Nashville Stampede coach Justin McBride could see the smoke billowing at Silvano Alves’ ranch the week before the 2022 PBR Team Series Championship.

The smoke was well beyond the juicy Brazilian barbecue that Alves and his wife, Evelyn, were cooking up following the team’s final practice before heading to Vegas. McBride knew his team was not only hungry for some of Alves’ home cooking, but for bull riding success.

Ryan Dirteater and Matt Triplett had flown into Texas to train with their teammates, and McBride couldn’t help but think something special may be brewing as he watched his team participate in its final tune.

“Our practice sessions were getting pretty salty,” McBride said. “It was getting pretty intense and the practice pen was our sharpest of the year. I was like, ‘Oh! Ok!’ Direction change wasn’t a problem. The guys seemed ready.”

McBride had seen his team be the punching bag all season long, and at times they were even the laughingstock of the league. McBride, of course, understood that would be the case with the Stampede heading into Vegas at 7-20-1.

“Your record is still always your record,” McBride said days before the PBR Team Series Championship shaking his head in disgust.

However, McBride had a hunch that his team was ready to erupt in Las Vegas when the slate was wiped clean with every team would start 0-0 inside T-Mobile Arena.

The countless regular season games where McBride purposely put his riders in challenging matchups to make them better vs. matching them up with an easy spinner into their hands and the endless hours of hot, humid workouts in Weatherford, Texas, were bound to finally pay off.

The commitment the Nashville Stampede ownership group (Morris Communications) made to buy the team those same practice bulls was going to benefit the team.

McBride knew this.

He believed this.

The 42-year-old head coach never wavered off that thought, even as his hatred for losing time and time again was eating away at his championship-desiring soul.

McBride trusted in what he, General Manager Tina Battock and Director of Rider Development/ Scouting Keith Ryan Cartwright had built in the past year.

“I watched them work. I watched them be beat up, beaten down and how they stayed resilient all year long,” McBride said. “I knew it was there. Everybody has to hit their potential at the same time, but I knew it was there. You can’t keep that kind of stuff down forever. It is going to bubble to the top. It is like a volcano that just kept smoldering, kept smoldering and people kept thinking it’s going to blow today and then it erupts.”

The volcanic eruption came at the right time for Nashville as they went 4-0 at the PBR Team Series Championship to win the inaugural title despite entering the postseason as the lowest seed in the league.

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McBride had just finished celebrating with his team on the dirt of T-Mobile Arena when he pointed to that practice pen as one of the key moments in which he felt his team was truly ready to shock the world.

Yes, he never doubted his team, but he also wondered if things would ever come together in time.  

“It has been a grind,” a mentally zapped McBride said. “I am not going to shit you. I could lie to you and say, ‘oh we kept on going and it was fine,’ but it wasn’t. Everybody was mentally tested. Myself included. But at the same time, if it was easy, this wouldn’t mean very much. That is how it is with petty much everything life. If it is not hard, what’s the point? This has definitely been hard.”

Nashville’s mental fortitude was on full display in Las Vegas, and the team will be honored Thursday locally in Nashville and during the Nashville Predators’ home game against the New York Islanders.

The Stampede never wavered under the bright lights or the most stressful moments, whereas plenty of other teams in the playoffs crumbled when the heat was turned up.

It wasn’t just 2018 World Champion and Ice Man Kaique Pacheco, who went 4-for-4 in the most pressure-filled moments of the weekend. Nor was it just veterans like 2016 World Finals event winner Dirteater and three-time World Champion Alves.

It was riders such as Joao Henrique Lucas and Cladson Rodolfo, a man who has come back from breaking his femur four times in his young career, who logged clutch rides as well.