Mavericks bring the bull-riding action to UBS Arena

New York’s year-old bull-riding team, the Mavericks, will play host to a 10-team homestand Thursday through Saturday at UBS Arena in Elmont — and, like the Mets in their fabled first years, hope to start climbing up from last place in the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) rankings.

The Mavericks were one of two expansion teams in 2024, along with the currently sixth-place Oklahoma Wildcatters. This homestand is the league’s only Long Island competition of the season, which commenced July 11 and concludes with a championship tournament in Las Vegas Oct. 24-26.

Coaching the “concrete cowboys,” as the Mavericks are nicknamed, is Bull Riding Hall of Famer Kody Lostroh, who retired in 2018 after a storied career that includes the 2009 PBR World Championship — and whose first win, in 2005, was at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale.

“It was an adventure,” recalled Lostroh, who turns 40 on Thursday. “I went by myself, a 19-year-old kid. Had no idea what I was doing. I landed at, I don't know, LaGuardia [Airport] or something, and was trying to find my way to Nassau [Coliseum] from New York City. I just remember being lost a lot of the time,” he added. “Somehow I ended up at Nassau and rode my bulls and won the event.”

And, he said, “I’ve still got the big ‘Happy Gilmore’ check,” referring to an oversize ceremonial check as in the 1996 Adam Sandler golf movie and countless real and reel sweepstakes. “It hangs in my gym. I see it every day.”

The roughly 2½-hour event “always has some sort of action going on,” Lostroh said. In addition to five riders from each of the 10 teams trying to stay atop a bucking bull for eight seconds for points, “there's lots of pyro and rock music, and then in between, we have what's called the arena entertainer” who keeps the audience revved up. There is a rotating handful, with longtime rodeo clown “Danger Dave” Whitmoyer at UBS Arena.

Like a highly dangerous “Dancing with the Stars,” riders are judged on control, which includes fluidity of movement and matching and countering the bull’s moves. The specially bred and trained bulls — there are 785 in the PBR — are judged for difficulty to ride, which considers things like spin, direction changes and kicks. The combined bull and rider scores for each completed ride make up the ride score.

The bull, of course, doesn’t just stop when the eight-second buzzer sounds. “They keep bucking just as hard,” Lostroh said. The rider jumps off in “a controlled dismount. You hit the ground and roll out of there safe and clear. In practical terms,” he adds, “it doesn't always happen that way.” The riders wear padding and helmets, but according to a report in the Journal of the San Francisco Medical Society, bull riding has an injury rate 10 times that of football.

Additionally, getting the bull away from the rider and out of the arena takes “bullfighters” — no relation to matadors — who must beware getting charged or stepped on. Being gored is less of an issue since the bulls’ horns are “tipped,” or dulled down, as with manicured fingernails. Still, Lostroh said, being on the receiving end of one “is like getting hit with a baseball bat.”

The only other local PBR event this season is a non-league, individual-rider competition at Madison Square Garden Jan. 9-11, part of the “Unleash the Beast” series.