story by Lily Weinacht
It takes grit to get on a bareback horse—and even more to handle the injuries that inevitably occur. Morgan Thompson, the 2017 NLBRA Senior Boy World Champion Bareback Rider, knows both sides of his favorite event. The same grit that made him a successful bareback rider now urges him forward as he recovers from a brachial plexus injury and works to rebrand himself as a saddle bronc rider.
Prior to an injury at a college practice rodeo, where Morgan’s riding arm suffered serious nerve damage, the 19-year-old from Braxton, Mississippi, was riding high after an outstanding 2017 season. A broken ankle at the beginning of the season sidelined him for several crucial months, but he thrived on the pressure to succeed once he was released to ride. “I knew I had to win everything. I had to win the all-around in high school to get up there (in the standings) because I was behind,” says Morgan. Already a two-time NHSFR bareback qualifier and the 2016 Mississippi High School Rodeo Bareback Riding Champion, Morgan qualified for the NHSFR a third time. He competed first at the NLBFR, and the Lazy E Arena treated him well his first time at the finals. Morgan won the first round with an 85 and won the next two as well, securing both the average and the world title. “I was surprised, because I was maxed out on points and I barely made it to Nationals. I came in right at the end with barely enough rodeos. It was competitive, and there were a couple other good riders there and I knew I had to cock my hammer when I got there.”
Following the NLBFR, Morgan spurred a bronc at the NHSFR to win the first round with an 81, the highest marked ride of the finals that week. “It feels good to win,” he says. “I just set one goal at a time, and once I achieve it, I go to the next.” Morgan was also the Tri State High School Champion Bareback Rider in 2015 and 2016, and won the average at the Mississippi state finals again in 2017.
His mom, Penny, competed in the NLBRA with her brother in the 1980s, and his dad, Jeremy, rode and fought bulls, and roped. Morgan’s brother, Peyton, team ropes in the NLBRA, while Morgan is the first of his family to ride broncs. “When I was 14, I went to the Justin Cowboy Crisis Thanksgiving Rodeo School in Mesquite, Texas, and I went along with a pickup man, Shawn Calhoun. He got me on some steers with a bareback rigging, and then I got on my first bareback horse at a Little Britches rodeo in Louisville, Mississippi,” says Morgan, who won the bareback riding in the Mid South Little Britches Rodeo Association his rookie year in 2014, and in 2016. “My mom and dad help me a lot, and a man named Jay Austin, who’s the only one around where I live that has bucking horses we could practice on.”
After graduating high school last spring, Morgan accepted a rodeo scholarship to Clarendon College in Texas, but put school on hold after his injury in September. Since then, he’s met with Tandy Freeman, the medical director of the PRCA Justin Sportsmedicine Team, and will have nerve grafting and tendon transfers done this summer at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. Right now, Morgan can’t use his bicep, or index finger and thumb on his right hand, but given an estimated year and a half of rehab, he plans to start riding saddle broncs left handed and continue with his goal of pro rodeoing and qualifying for the WNFR.
“There are not a lot of bareback riders because it takes a lot of guts to get on them, but it takes grit to actually spur them the way Morgan did,” says Penny. “The chances of him ever being able to use his riding arm again to ride bareback horses is very slim, but I hope to someday see his grit on a saddle bronc horse. God has a plan for Morgan and I pray it is to rodeo because we love it that much!”
