PUEBLO, Colo. – The end of the regular season may not have been as pretty as the beginning of the season was for the Austin Gamblers, but in the end, they still got there.

The Gamblers went 1-2 at Rattler Days in Fort Worth, Texas, but one win on Championship Sunday was all they needed to secure the regular-season championship and No. 1 seed going into the 2023 PBR Teams Championship on Oct. 20-22 in Las Vegas.

The team gathered in the locker room afterward, coolers of champagne, Bud Light and lemonade – for team captain and two-time World Champion Jose Vitor Leme, who doesn’t drink – at the ready.

Gamblers CEO JJ Gottsch and other staff members pulled out boxes full of black t-shirts with “2023 regular season champions” emblazoned on them in Gamblers’ green.

“We’ve had these made for a long time,” Gottsch said with assistant coach Adriano Moraes translating into Portuguese. “We knew you were going to win it. Because you are regular-season champions.”

The room erupted into cheers, and the celebration began, riders donning their t-shirts, popping champagne, and dancing to “Back to Back” by Drake – it was, of course, the Gamblers’ second consecutive regular-season title.

The celebration was weeks in the making. After beginning the season an eye-popping 13-1, the Gamblers fell back to earth as of late, going 6-8 down the stretch. They went 1-2 in Ridgedale, Missouri, before going 3-0 for the event win in Greensboro, North Carolina, and then went 1-2 in each of the last two events.

“Kind of a hard way to get there, wasn’t it?” joked a relieved head coach Michael Gaffney, wearing his regular-season champions t-shirt. “We kept the drama flowing.”

The Kansas City Outlaws, once a distant No. 2, closed the gap. Rapidly. They went 3-0 for an event win in Glendale, Arizona, before going 3-0 again in Fort Worth, falling in extra outs to the Texas Rattlers.

The Outlaws finished the season 18-10, just one game behind Austin.

Gaffney knows that the pressure of a clinch and Kansas City breathing down their necks affected his riders.

“Without a doubt,” he said. “It seemed like with each passing game, the drama and the pressure on each one of them – we all know what a head game this is, like so many other sports. Then you start talking about the Championship, and then we’re ahead by so many games, we’re ahead by this, we’re ahead by that, Jose’s in the lead for the MVP. So there is, and that’s where I think the real compartmentalizing, besides the fact that you’re facing death every time that you nod your head, is to keep those things in their proper place and just go do your job, and that’s to ride your bulls. And again, it is very simplistic. Don’t make it any more difficult than that. But when you start hearing the noise and the hype and the hoopla and the points this and the Championship that, you can stick to what we say in the old practice pen, like you’re getting on there. Just go out and nod your head like it’s another bull. Forget the noise, and things will work out.”

Gaffney, the 1997 PBR World Champion, knows a few things about pressure situations himself. In addition to his successes as a bull rider, he coached the Gamblers to a 16-12 record and the regular-season title in 2022. That squad ultimately fell short of the championship, going 0-2 in Las Vegas to be eliminated in fifth place.

This season, he’s tried to keep himself even-keeled, regardless of his team’s results.

“Not really trying to change my tone at all, which is hard to do, especially as the drama unfolds before your eyes,” Gaffney said. “I was trying to keep the very same tone that we’ve had all season, when we were winning those events, one, two, three and four, and just trying to stay the same. Because if you’re going to preach that it’s no different than last night or two weeks ago, hopefully, I’m projecting that same thing, which is kind of difficult because you get excited or you get down or whatever.

“After it’s all said and done, there’s going to be those failures, but at the end of the day, I reminded them, ‘Don’t discount the four wins we had and put us in this great position here this weekend, to have a chance to win the season.’”

Ultimately, the Gamblers did exactly enough to earn those t-shirts Gottsch had made, and the Outlaws simply ran out of time to catch them in the standings. Leme, too, did exactly enough to earn his second consecutive MVP title, outpacing Kansas City’s Cassio Dias by 87 points – a single bull ride.

RELATED: Leme secures second consecutive PBR Teams MVP title, tips cap to Dias

Leme went 20-for-29 this season for a 68% riding percentage, while Dias went 19-for-26 for a 73% riding percentage in his debut season. The two matched each other with five 90-point rides apiece.

“My wife calls him the oak,” Gaffney said of Leme. “And there’s a reason why she calls him that, is because he’s so reliable. The oak is one of the hardwoods, right? And he’s somebody you can lean on, and you know he’s always there and secure.”

Leme’s final qualified ride of the season came after a brutal wreck suffered the night before when Whiplash pulled Leme down onto his head and knocked him out.

Leme was carried off the arena dirt on a backboard but passed the PBR sports medicine team’s concussion protocol with flying colors the following day. He was back in the draw that night, riding Outlaw for 89.25 points.

“We were surprised,” Gaffney said. “We were picking bulls for the next round, and he wanted to be a part of it, and I was like, ‘You need to go relax.’ (Dr.) Tandy (Freeman) said just to chill out, don’t watch screens and all that stuff. But he’s the captain. He wanted to be a part of it, and he really was.

“But what more can you say about a guy like him? So meticulous. So driven. So overly ambitious on what his goals are and what he’s wanting to do in the arena. My hat’s off to him. What he brings to the team – the attitude, the discipline, the hard work, the choices that he makes. Every choice, it seems like, without even getting into his personal life, is so much about being perfect. And how does that not affect you in the locker room if you’re one of the fellow teammates?”

The Gamblers now turn their focus to winning the 2023 PBR Teams Championship. The top two teams in the regular season earned a first-round bye in Las Vegas, so the Gamblers won’t know their first opponent until the conclusion of competition on Oct. 20.

In Vegas, Austin will look to exorcise some demons from their disappointing finish in 2022. Gaffney thinks that this tough stretch of the season might end up being good for his team.

“This is maybe kind of a quick recount of, hey, in our business, you can go from champ to chump so fast, from one night to the next,” Gaffney said. “Because of the sheer brutality of our sport, it keeps you from getting a big head. And so now, with this kind of failure, in a sense, it’s a matter of, hey, we do have unfinished business, and we have to reach down and pull our bootstraps up and go in there and really work on our focus and know that nothing’s going to be handed to you. You’ve got to go back in there and charge ahead and ride our bulls.”

Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media