Sports Psychology Comes to PBR, Bulls Included

Before Cool Whip became the Joe DiMaggio of PBR with the longest consecutive buck-off streak in the sport’s history – 44 wins and counting – he nearly blew a chance at a Hall of Fame career.

The bull was competing at the 2020 ABBI World Finals in Las Vegas. As a front runner at the futurity world championship – a bucking competition placing a 15-pound dummy box on the back of young 2-year-old bull – he had yet to feel a human rider on his back.

For the last out deciding the champion, Staci Addison, who co-owns Cool Whip with her partner Tommy Julian and D&H Cattle Co., was flanking him. After she put the soft training rope around his haunches, the big bovine with a coat the color of hot desert sand did something he’d never done before. He laid down in the bucking chute.

This was completely out of character. Sure, Cool Whip is gentle, craves scratches, and loves kids. But he always knew when it was time to go to work. 

The bucking chute to this bull had been like the phone booth to Clark Kent. Until now.

On the flank board, Addison moved over to Cool Whip’s head. She leaned into the gate and sternly said, “Cool Whip! What are you doing? We’ve been working all year for this! Get up, it’s time to work!”

Before cracking a joke about an earnest woman reasoning with a four-legged assemblage of taut muscles with two Louisville sluggers pointing from his head, fully expecting comprehension and compliance, factor this in: Addison regularly sings “You Are My Sunshine” to Cool Whip. She shows him game tape – video on her phone of his outs. Only the good ones, though; she wants to build his confidence. She calls him “sweet pea” and “big boy” and “stud muffin.” Before every event, she reminds Cool Whip he’s a gentleman.

“Do your best,” she tells him. “Whatever happens, I love you.”

So, this was far from Addison’s first conversation with Cool Whip. She gets that he may not understand every word. But she knows he feels her tone.

Cool Whip stood up to get down to business.

The gate swung open, he did his job, and was judged best overall, becoming the 2020 Cowgirl Futurity World Champion. 

When fully developed, Cool Whip would begin accepting riders on his back. Four years later, there is not a more reliably difficult bull on the planet for the world’s top cowboys to try to last eight seconds on. He has bucked off 61 of 62 riders he’s faced, scored a very high 46 points nine times.

And then there’s “The Streak.”

Joao Ricardo Vieira rode him for 8 seconds in Tulsa in April 2022. Since then, nobody’s been able to score a qualified ride on the bull.

At World Finals in May 2024, he exploded from the chutes and whipped down Claudio Montanha Jr. in 1.18 seconds, breaking Bushwacker’s famed 42 consecutive buck-off streak premier-level record.

Bushwacker may be the most famous bull in the sport’s history. But Cool Whip is nearing the rarified land of Joe DiMaggio.

With the advent of the PBR Teams league, bull riders who had historically been solo practitioners are now getting professional coaching. Sports psychology is now employed to motivate these athletes to keep hanging on despite the often-ugly reckoning that comes when keeping a hand closed in a bull rope as the ride goes awry.

As two-time World Champion J.B. Mauney once said, a bull rider’s most important body part is above his shoulders.

Riders like 2009 World Champion Kody Lostroh began training their minds more than 15 years ago, and team Coaches are experimenting with new approaches to mental conditioning. And now, Staci Addison is applying sports psychology to the other athlete in each ride – the bulls.

Along with the pep talks, she charts a career path fostering positive reinforcement. That means delaying her bulls’ ascent to the premier level.

“We don’t typically buck them at the top too early because we understand heart, we understand their spirit,” Addison said. “We don’t want their spirit broken. They know their job is to carry a dummy, then throw a rider, off their back. I never want to put a bull in a position they’re not ready for. By the time a bull is four, they’re physically and emotionally matured to face the world’s top riders.”

That’s the case with Plowboy and Prince Charming, a big, good-looking three-year old, hence his name. Both have been invited to the elite Unleash The Beast tour. Too early, Addison decided. Plowboy and Prince Charming await their chance to show their stuff at the big show.

Waiting further in the wings is Whipped Cream. The yearling son of Cool Whip, now starting to buck with a dummy on his back, is a carbon copy of his dad down to the way he paces in the pen.

Approaching a decade into her career in the ultra-competitive bucking bull business, Addison is an unlikely candidate for the job.

Born in Missouri, she’s been a banker, a ballet instructor, an inn keeper, radio DJ, fundraising consultant, and a retirement community activities director.

She nearly became a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader, making it to the final 60 of 600 who tried out in 1985. She worked for Miranda Lambert as general manager of The Ladysmith, her boutique hotel in Oklahoman as well as her boutique shop and three bars.

(A search of her photo running across a flat, remote Utah highway with Forrest Gump was unsuccessful.)

Addison’s resume was already downright eclectic when she met Tommy Julian in 2016 and moved to his place in Broken Bow, Oklahoma where they are today.

After doing so many things to make a living, at 50 she found her passion when she and Julian bought their first bull, High Test, partnering with H.D. Page. He won bull of the year.

“We were saying, ‘Hey, this feels really easy, let’s do it again,’” she recalled.  

They bought another bull, Fearless, and he won, too. Cool Whip came in 2019.

After three years of buying into bulls, Addison and Julian started their own operation in 2021. They now have more than 200 head of mama cows and 100 bulls.

“Bull bucking has impacted my life in ways that I would have never imagined. It pulled out of me a completely different level of compassion for another living being,” Addison said. “When you are 50 years old and completely change directions to do something completely different that you’ve never done before, it’s exhilarating – to give yourself permission to try something new. It’s very empowering.”  

“Staci is the epitome of the love between a bull owner, a stock contractor and those beautiful animals,” said Fanchon Stinger, co-anchor of “Morning on Merit Street” and a bull owner herself who has interviewed Addison on the two-hour daily news show. “They become like your children. We see that in the way Staci talks to her bulls and the level of care she gives them.”

Addison knows it takes a village to create a champion bucking bull.

One of the unsung heroes in that community is Rooster Gilstrap of D&H Cattle Company, the country’s largest producer of top bucking bulls, who drives a semi filled with millions of dollars of bull power.

“I load ‘em up (onto the truck) with feed and hay. When we leave, the bulls no longer belong to D&H. They belong to Rooster,” he said. “I feed ‘em and take care of them the best I can. I flank ‘em. We do it because we love it; we don’t do it because we’re getting rich, I can promise you that.”

Rooster’s dad was a rodeo clown for 36 years, who began putting his son in his pickup truck to take on the road as soon as he could walk. One day he called the boy Rooster, and the name stuck. For a time, Rooster, 50, clowned and fought bulls, protecting the bucked-off riders on the dirt.

“I was a mediocre bull fighter and a better clown,” he said. “It taught me how to work with the animals. I had a few injuries, been knocked out a time or two. My heart tells me I could do it, but my feet aren’t as fast now.”

Thirteen years ago, he joined D&H Cattle. This year, he’s been everywhere from Albany, NY to Los Angeles. By the time the calendar is ready to flip in December, he’ll have driven the rig 150,000 miles.

He typically hauls anywhere from eight to 25 head. There are no days off. The animals always eat first – a high-protein blend custom made by Dylan Page, 5.5% fat with lots of fiber, which Rooster laughs is a lot healthier than his fare on the road.

The job is a whole lot more than driving, feeding, flanking, and turning the bulls out to pasture on an Oklahoma ranch close to 10,000 acres.  

“We are part vet, too,” he said. “You learn that by being around them. HD has taught me a bunch. I can do minimal doctoring.”

Like Addison, Rooster has special feelings for Cool Whip.

“He’s chilled out. I let him play a bit. When I load him in the lead up on Friday night, he knows its game time,” he said.

And like Addison, he has regular conversations with Cool Whip. 

“I call him Marsh Mellow cause he’s kind of fat like me,” he said. “A lot of people make fun of me ‘cause I talk to my animals in the pen. They know you; they know your voice. I don’t holler, but I do talk in a stern voice. They need to know who’s in charge. They get used to my voice and movements and what I’m doing. They’re creatures of habit.” 

He notices Cool Whip’s special bond with Addison when she comes around.

“We both love that he tries his heart out so hard. He gives you his all every time he loads up and bucks. He has his off day like any other pro athlete, and they are athletes. He’s a star, and a fan favorite.”

Joe DiMaggio’s 56 consecutive games with a base hit has been called the greatest streak in sports. With the advent of relief pitchers throwing a hundred and today’s unrelenting media spotlight, it’s the major sports record considered unbreakable.

“The Yankee Clipper” had 91 hits over a two-month period in the summer of 1941, creating a summer-craze diversion while WWII raged in Europe.

While his streak featured plenty of frozen-rope doubles and 425-foot boomers (Joltin’ Joe hammered 15 home runs while hitting .408), there were a few weak hits and gift calls. You gotta be a little bit lucky to be a whole lot of legendary.

The streak could have ended at 16 games when a fluttering fly ball was misplayed by Red Sox outfielder Pete Fox for a double and at 30 when a bad bounce crossed up White Sox shortstop Luke Appling, and DiMaggio was given a hit.  

Will Cool Whip get to 56 consecutive buck-offs? And if that happens, is there valid sports-talk comparison to the feat of a stoic man who a nation turned its lonely eyes to?

Maybe Paul Simon will write a song about the bull and his owner.

And here’s to you, Mrs. Addison.

PBR heads into Fort Worth for Rattler Days this weekend, and Cool Whip is scheduled to be out on Friday night in Dickies Arena (Merit Street, 9 p.m. ET).

For the past two and a half years, since The Streak began, Cool Whip has yet to stumble or go half speed any night. There’s no mailing it in, no hanging back, no laying down on the job.

Cool Whip knows if he were to ease off, he’d get one heck of an earful from Staci Addison.