PUEBLO, Colo. – When the Oklahoma Freedom brass were preparing for the inaugural PBR Team Series Draft in May of 2022, head coach Cord McCoy says they had a list of 267 guys to keep an eye on.

But ultimately, they knew what they were looking for.

With the eighth overall pick, the Freedom selected Eli Vastbinder.

“His age, his maturity, being able to ride hurt,” McCoy said. “There’s a lot of things that go into what makes him a Round 1 draft pick.”

Fans can relive the draft and Vastbinder’s selection in the first episode of The Ride, available for streaming on May 30 on Amazon Prime.

The eight-episode docuseries, produced by Kinetic Content, gives viewers a first-of-its-kind, behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s fastest-growing sports and takes them into the daily lives of some of its biggest stars, bringing fans closer to the action than ever before. The Ride follows an ensemble cast of bull riders and coaches throughout the PBR Team Series as they navigate the league’s inaugural 2022 season, budding rivalries, exhilarating highs, and challenging lows of PBR’s newest team-based competition.

While Vastbinder first appears in the Team Series as a first-round draft pick, his journey to get there was far from a walk in the park.

He struggled as a young bull rider working his way up the ranks in the rodeo world, crediting his wife Paige for staying by his side through all the tough times.

“I don’t know what I would do without my wife,” Vastbinder said. “Paige was with me before I had any money, before I had won anything. We lived in this trailer house for two years, me and her and a handful of other bull riders, and I was gone rodeoing ten months out of the year. She was back here working. There was times where she was paying my way, paying for me to go to bull ridings and helping me out.”

“It was a lot of going to rodeos and practicing,” Paige said of those lean years. “He was just always on the move.”

But Vastbinder was determined to give her a better life.

“Since day one, I told her that, ‘There’s a better life coming. Just hold out, and I promise you it’s going to be worth it,’” he said.

When Vastbinder was 30, Paige discovered that she was pregnant.

With twins.

While he was in the middle of his rookie season in the PBR.

“It was a big time in my life,” Vastbinder said. “I kind of went through a point where I was struggling more so than I ever did with bull riding or anything. I’d been a rodeo bum and didn’t have to answer to nobody, and now I’ve got a baby on the way, and not just one, but two of them. I was excited, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

Paige gave birth to twin girls, Whitney Blair and Vicki Blake, on October 25, 2021, at just 30 weeks. While Whitney Blair was healthy, Vicki Blake had a heart condition. She was immediately intubated, taken to the NICU, and later underwent heart surgery.

“Everything come out great,” Vastbinder said of the surgery. “I stayed in the NICU with them for two days, and flew to Las Vegas for my very first PBR World Finals.”

At the 2021 PBR World Finals, Vastbinder had the performance of his career. He finished fifth overall, going 4-for-6 with each of his four rides scoring 90-plus points, and winning Rookie of the Year.

Even more impressively, he did so after suffering a separated shoulder and broken rib.

“I showed up there with bigger problems than riding bulls on my mind, and so it was easy to not think about it and just let my body take over,” Vastbinder said. “It was a big moment in my life. I was definitely riding for the girls.”

And his girls – all three of them – were rooting him on.

“We would FaceTime whenever I would go to the NICU so that he could see the girls,” Paige said. “We watched every round, of course, and screamed at the TV.”

In 2022, he finished the Unleash The Beast season ranked No. 9 in the world before being drafted by the Freedom. As for how the Team Series season went for him – well, you’ll just have to tune into The Ride to relive it.

But one thing is for sure: he’s not going to quit.

“Having the girls has really changed my whole career, bull-riding wise,” Vastbinder said. “It kind of put a fire in me, and when it’s all said and done, it’s going to set them girls and us up. This is my job.”