Regular-season leader seeks first world title

It was a phone call Will Lummus had long hoped he would receive.

To be clear, there’s no telling how many times Bob Lummus’ name has popped up on Will’s screen. After all, it’s not uncommon for Will to get a call from his uncle. But this time, things were different.

The 2025 PRCA regular season concluded on Sept. 30 with a few last-chance events scattered across the country on a Tuesday afternoon. The results from that day were tallied, finalizing the top 15 in each event and setting the qualifying list for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo.

For the first time in a career that started back in 2012, Will’s name was atop the standings as the regular-season leader. He finished with a regular season career-high of $195,000 in earnings, about $33,000 ahead of second-place Jesse Brown.

Once the list was set, Bob was eager to be among the first to talk to him.

“He called me right after the season ended and said, ‘Well that’s another buckle we get to share now,’ so that was cool,” Will said.

Bob, a four-time NFR steer wrestling qualifier during his career, finished as regular-season leader back in 2001.

“To me, the season leader is important,” Will said. “I feel like it’s looked over a lot of times, because it is the guy who was truly the best all year long, and all different aspects of rodeo. It is truly humbling, and I’m very grateful to be in that spot”

It’s another item crossed off Will’s checklist of career accomplishments. Now, his focus is on finishing rodeo’s postseason where he beganat the top once these 10 days end at the Thomas &Mack Center.

While being No. 1 at the end of the regular season is a new feeling, success at rodeo’s season-culminating showcase is a bit more familiar. But Will is still seeking that first world championship.

Since 2018, Will has strung together eight consecutive trips to the NFR. In the seven previous appearances, he’s managed to finish inside the top five of the world standings on five occasions, including a trio of runner-up showings.

Last season, he placed second in both the world and the NFR average, after catching nine of the 10 steers he faced in a combined 43.2 seconds. He narrowly missed out on his second NFR average championship.

That momentum carried over into 2025, as Will won or co-championed nine events and used a late-season surge to overtake a handful of competitors for the top spot on the PRCA leaderboard. With a regular-season objective accomplished, he is now taking aim at some lofty aspirations for this appearance in Las Vegas.

“I’ve got a couple of goals in mind and one of them is kind of aggressive — I want to win $228,000 at the Finals this year because that would put me at $1 million in the Thomas &Mack alone,” Will said. “If we can draw good and stay on the right end of them, I like our chance for success this year. Even if I don’t, and then we win $150,000 or $160,000 — which has been a handful of times for us — going in with a $30,000 lead, I feel like we have a good opportunity to win the gold buckle.”

Coming up short in the chase for that ultimate championship hardware has been the lone shortcoming in a stellar career for the Byhalia, Miss., native. He’s certainly been close, just never quite able to get over the finish line.

Despite those narrow misses, Will isn’t changing his approach. He’s still riding his trusty horse, Swamper, and relying on Dakota Eldridge to haze for him, just like last season.

If anything, the competition at the NFR is what gets him going. Seeing other bulldoggers post fast times before he backs in the box has always been a motivator.

“That’s where Tyler Waguespack and I feed off each other. If one of us is before the other one, and we throw one fast, we can talk a little smack walking out of the arena. It just pushes the other one to do great as well,” Will said. “In that building, it’s just easy to thrive off other people’s success. Every time you nod your head, it’s for $37,000, and that automatically lights a fire underneath you.”

And as for that elusive gold buckle, maybe this is the year. Will jokes that earning the accolade might allow him to start contemplating retirement. But the accomplishment — or the lack thereof — isn’t something that’s going to define his career.

“Ultimately, it’s the only thing I really haven’t won. There’s some regular-season rodeos that I haven’t won, but as far as big year-end stuff, now that I have the season leader, it would mean everything to get the gold buckle,” Will said. “But ultimately, I got in this game to make money, and it’s been fantastic for almost a decade now. I’ve made peace with it that if I don’t get it, it’s not the end of the world.

“But it really would be the cap of a stellar career for me.”