MERIDIAN — East Mississippi Community College’s rodeo teams bounced back from their spring season opener to post a third-place men’s finish and a fourth-place women’s showing at the weather-shortened 13th Annual EMCC Intercollegiate Rodeo held this week at Meridian’s Lauderdale County Agri-Center.

 

EMCC’s scheduled three-day rodeo event concluded a day early on Friday afternoon due to impending severe weather expected to arrive later in the evening and continue into Saturday.

 

With scoring determined based on just one go-round and Saturday’s short go-round cancelled, the EMCC men totaled 447 team points to finish just 14 points behind runner-up West Alabama. EMCC’s women finished just 24.6 team points behind third-place Pearl River. The Lions’ pair of team finishes in their own EMCC-hosted rodeo came on the heels of scoreless team efforts at the previous week’s Arkansas Tech University-hosted event held in Searcy, Arkansas.

 

Missouri Valley College scored 720.5 team points to claim the men’s team title in Meridian, while the MVC women finished just 39.2 points behind UT Martin’s winning effort of 360.2 points in the women’s team competition.

 

For the Lions, Carson Powell accounted for 233 of EMCC’s team points with a second-place finish in the steer wrestling event and a third-place effort in tie-down roping. Powell’s 4.5-second performance in steer wrestling earned 126 points, and his 11.3-second clocking in tie-down roping collected 107 points.

 

Additionally in tie-down roping, EMCC’s Dakari Gaylor picked up 88 individual points for his fourth-place performance of 12.1 seconds.The other 214 men’s points for the Lions were secured by the team roping tandem of Waylon Buskirk and Kannon Nunnery for their third-place run of 6.9 seconds.

 

For the EMCC women, Karson Moore was responsible for all of the team’s 145 points by winning the breakaway roping event with a first-place time of 2.0 seconds.

Head coach Morgan Goodrich’s East Mississippi rodeo teams will continue NIRA Ozark Region competition March 20-22 at Pearl River Community College in Poplarville.