Sterling City teen wins Fort Worth Stock Show junior steer grand prize
The steer walked out into the belly of the arena in a line: the chestnut and white ones, the brown ones, the black ones, the grayish tan one.
They stood in two lines with plush fur — looking more like toys than animals — on clay-colored dirt in a half-full Coliseum at Will Rogers Memorial Center as they awaited fate.
Even as a winter storm melted outside, a champion had to be crowned. And Jarold Callahan, this year’s judge, declared the winner of the Junior Steer Show with a firm slap on the behind of a black steer with thick legs.
This year’s best in show: 16-year-old Tristan Himes of Sterling City and his cross, Steve.
The popular event rounds out the Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo’s more than three-week run. This year, 3,221 steers competed for the top prize, a spokesperson said.
“This is, if not the best steer show in America, it’s certainly one of the two or three premiere steer shows in America,” Callahan told the Star-Telegram. “Most people would say it’s the best.”
Callahan, who returned to Fort Worth this week to judge the steers after a few years away, said that when he’s judging steer, he looks for muscle, balance, and finish, which means degree of fat cover.
“Muscle’s the product we’re selling,” he said.
On Friday, Steve was the steer with the full package. Tristan told reporters following his win that he felt incredible and “extremely blessed.” The high school junior started showing in third grade and has shown a steer at the stock show every chance he could since.
“It becomes your life,” Tristan said.
The show’s Reserve Grand Champion title went to 11-year-old Mason Grady of Grandview and his reddish brown steer Bugsy with bulging brown eyes and huge fuzzy ears that sat on the side of his head like earmuffs.
“Whenever I felt down at the steer barn, at our steer barn, I just look at him and see his big bug eyes, and I just think ... this steer’s got big eyes,’” Mason said.
Both Mason and Tristan will say goodbye to Bugsy and Steve come Saturday when the steer are auctioned off at the Junior Sale of Champions, along with 300 other animals. Tristan called Steve his best friend, and said he will be sad having to let him go.
The Grand Champion Steer in 2020 — a gargantuan chestnut and white Hereford named Cupid Shuffle — broke records with a $300,000 price tag. As for this year, only time will tell whether Steve breaks records.
“Do I think we would break the record? Who knows,” said Stefan Marchman, livestock show manager.
The wins at the Junior Steer Show run in the family. Tristan’s cousin, Flint Newman, won the title in 2014. Tristan said he’s been dreaming of capturing a win of his own ever since.
“He’s just about as good as it can get as far as how they act,” Tristan said of his steer. “I think he’s kind of pretty too.”
