'No quit' has 18-year-old Muncie bull rider headed to nationals

PHOTO GALLERY: Bull Riding Training in Vermilion County

A couple years ago, Gage Warren of Muncie knocked on the door of former bull rider Kelly Clem, asking if he could teach him how it’s done. Fast forward to today, and teenagers are coming to Clem's C Cross Ranch from all over the surrounding area and even out of state to learn from the master. The facilities include an arena enclosed by a pole barn, which the Clems built so they could provide bull riding lessons year-round with their stock.

"Anybody can go out and buy their kid a basketball or a football to play basketball or football," Clem said. "It's hard to ask your parents to go out and buy you an 1,800-pound bucking bull to practice on. That's what we're here for."

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MUNCIE — “I wanna ride bulls.”

That’s what Gage Warren told his parents after watching a rodeo at Gordyville USA.

His mother, Muncie Mayor SynDee Lane, responded to this declaration the same way most moms of a teenage boy would.

“I was like, you know how moms do, ‘We’ll see about that. We’ll see,’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘No, Mom. You always say that and then we don’t do it. I’m riding bulls.’”

Two years, hundreds of practice hours, countless falls and a couple of championship buckles later, Gage is doing just what he set out to do — and doing it better than anyone else in the state.

The Oakwood High grad, now 18, won the Illinois High School Rodeo Association State Bull Riding Championship in June and is the 2023-24 season points bull-riding champion.

This qualifies him to compete at the National High School Rodeo Association finals — an impressive feat, since this was his first year of competition and his last year of eligibility.

Nationals will be held July 14-20 in Wyoming. Gage is both nervous and excited as the competition nears.

“You can’t help but be nervous,” he said. “You’re going up against the best in the country.”

Gage also qualified for the National Little Britches Rodeo Association finals and is currently competing at that event in Guthrie, Okla. The finals began Sunday and end today.

“I don’t know that with just one season of high school rodeos and only like a year and a half of actually being on bulls we thought he would win the state finals or go to nationals, but it just kind of all came together for him,” Lane said. “And we’re so thrilled for him, because he really has put in a lot of time and work for it.”

While Gage’s decision to cowboy up might seem spur of the moment, it was actually something he’d been considering for a while.

“I always wanted to do something with rodeo because I knew my grandpa rode bulls in the Navy,” he said. “I just took a liking to bull riding, so I came home that night, told my mom and dad I wanted to bull ride.”

Lane wasn’t sure how to get Gage started with the sport, but she knew someone who might be able to help: Kelly Clem, who used to ride bulls and now runs a hobby farm called C Cross Ranch with his wife, Holly. The couple are both University of Illinois employees.

Clem had given bull-riding lessons in the past but hadn’t done so in a while, Lane said.

Clem said his father competed in rodeos, which led to him getting involved with them as well. Eventually, he bought bulls to practice on, which led to other riders asking if they could come over and join in.

However, bull riding (and raising) is just one part of the Clems’ long-running involvement in the rodeo circuit.

“We’ve had a rodeo company,” he said. “We used to produce Illinois high school rodeos — for three or four years, we did that. We also produced just open rodeos. I was able to haul some of the bulls we had to some bigger venues, bigger events. And just over the years of doing all this, it’s kind of one of the things where your name gets known.”

Clem said they slowed down a bit to focus on taking their daughter, Josey, to rodeos to compete in barrel racing. However, the Clems were still raising and selling bulls when Gage came knocking at their door.

“The word got out and everybody started calling,” Clem said.

“I thought he was kidding,” said Gage’s father, Shane Warren. “And then he found Kelly. ... Next thing you know, Kelly’s got him on a bull, and then we’re doing the rodeo circuit.”

In a bull-riding competition, the rider needs to stay on for eight seconds. Scores aren’t just based on whether you stay on, Gage said; they’re also determined by how the bull bucks.

“A bull that just kind of runs down the pen is gonna get scored a lot less than a bull that turns gaps right there in the latch, which is like spinning right there in the latch,” he said. “And then you’ve just got to sit there and make ’em look pretty, make ’em look like you are fully under control of everything, all your movements.”

Of course, before you’re ready to ride a bucking bull, you have to start out with something a little easier: a barrel.

During practices, two people will maneuver the barrel, suspended by ropes, back and forth while the rider does their best to stay balanced and avoid sliding off — a task that’s not as easy as it might sound.

C Cross Ranch also has a bucking machine that serves a similar purpose.

Gage started out on a barrel in fall 2022 and “didn’t actually get on a bull until about a year and a half ago,” Lane said.

Clem compared his bull-riding lessons to “cheat codes” for video games, giving kids who didn’t grow up on farms a chance to make up for lost time and learn fast.

“Anybody can go out and buy their kid a basketball or a football to play basketball or football,” he said. “It’s hard to ask your parents to go out and buy you an 1,800-pound bucking bull to practice on. That’s what we’re here for.”

“What most people don’t realize is how much work goes into this,” Shane Warren said.

Gage rides bulls at C Cross Ranch twice a week. At the beginning of each session, every rider trains on the barrel or the bucking machine before the bulls come out. Then they each get a turn on the “warm-up” bulls before having a go on the ones that are a bit more feisty.

Practice often runs long into the evening — which can be quite the endurance test when you’re in cowboy attire amid the sweltering June heat.

Gage also works on his balance and other skills outside of these practices.

In addition to keeping up with training and competitions, Gage also had to juggle school and his job at Gabe Shepherd’s cattle farm, Lane said.

Consistency is key, Clem said, attributing Gage’s quick progress to the fact that he rides twice a week.

“When he first come, there wasn’t a lot there except for his athletic ability,” he said. However, his moves have improved greatly with time — and so did what Clem calls his “mental game.”

“For him to win the state finals in such a short period of time, that’s a pretty cool deal,” he said. “A lot of guys have been putting a lot of years in it to accomplish what he did in such a short amount of time.”

“If I just stay out of my head, I feel like I’m gonna do really good, but I got that issue,” Gage said when asked how he was feeling about the national finals. “I get in my head, and everything just falls apart.”

“You climb down on an 1,800-pound bull, it’s a little intimidating,” Clem said. “So you’ve got to learn how to control your mind.”

On the physical side, staying in control of a bucking bull takes a lot of muscle and balance, Gage said.

“Every muscle in your body and everything come together to make a good ride,” he added.

Consequently, when Gage pulled his hamstring on both sides in the spring, he had to take a month off from riding to recover — the month before state finals, making his win all the more unexpected.

“I wasn’t expecting to come through at all,” he said.

”It’s a pulled muscle, but it’s a bad pulled muscle that’s in a bad place for a bull rider,” Lane said, though she acknowledged that it certainly could have been worse.

Shane said he’s lost count of the number of times Gage has gotten bucked. There have also been times when he’s gotten a hoof to the helmet or chest.

One particularly close call came when he was thrown off and landed face down, and the bullfighters had to step in to stop the bull from going after him.

Clem had to do the same at a recent practice after a particularly rambunctious bull bucked Gage and was pushing the rider with his nose — and perhaps getting a little too close with his horns.

“It’s a dangerous sport, and there’s a lot of people that help out along the way,” Shane Warren said.

Lane said that while she sometimes gets a bit of flak for letting Gage compete in such a risky pastime, she knows how much it means to him.

“It’s been fulfilling, because Gage has pretty much played every sport that’s out there,” Lane said. “From the time he was little, he played soccer, he’s played baseball, he’s played basketball, he’s ran track, he tried his hand at golf one year in high school.

“And while he liked those sports, none of them really stuck. I mean, he wasn’t bad at them. He did OK in them. ... He even wrestled in youth wrestling. He’s done pretty much anything you can do and he just never really found one that seemed like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

Until bull riding, that is.

Gage said he enjoys the sport because of the adrenaline rush and the challenge it presents.

“I like how you can practice so much for it, and then ... if you do one thing wrong, it can fail,” he said. “So you gotta make sure you do everything right.”

He also enjoys the individual nature of the sport; at the end of the day, “it’s just me against the bull,” Gage said.

When asked what makes Gage a great bull rider, Clem’s answer was simple: “No quit.”

“His determination, wanting to ride, that’s kind of a big part of it,” he said. “Some of these guys just come and climb on, but do they really want to stay on and ride? Not really, and that’s the reason why they fall off.

“Gage, when he’d fall off, we’d go through the reasons of why he fell off and he would learn from that. So he processed it, thought about it, practiced and got better about it. But yeah, no quit.”