story by Ruth Nicolaus
William Stabler is a gearhead and a bull rider, all wrapped into one. He’s good at mechanics, and his skills at riding bulls are improving. The eighteen-year-old cowboy lives outside Wayne, Neb. and is a member of the Nebraska High School Rodeo Association.
He began riding bulls last summer, learning from a friend in Hastings, and has progressed.
He loves riding and rodeo, the traveling, and the people. “I love traveling,” he said. “I’m always up for a car ride.” And he loves getting on bulls. “I don’t know what it is. It’s the adrenaline, I guess,” he said. “Being able to say I climbed down on a 1,200 lb. beast and I’m able to walk away from it just amazes me,” he said.
As senior at Wayne High School, he loves art classes. “I love drawing,” Will said. “It makes me forget about everything else and lets me be me for an hour or two a day.”
In his spare time, he works for a local farmer, doing mechanical work and driving tractor in the field. During harvest, he runs the grain cart and helps move trucks from field to field. In the summer, he works on planters, discs, cultivators, combines and tractors, pivots and gear boxes. He puts in about 35 hours a week during the school year and even more in the summer.
He’s careful about the money he earns, budgeting for upcoming bills, although going out with his girlfriend takes some of it.
Some of his earnings go towards his pickup,: a 1996 Chevy pickup. He’s getting the exhaust done, new rims and tires, and redoing the bottom end of the motor.
Last fall, Will broke his arm at the Bloomfield, Neb. rodeo. The bull blew out of the chute, turned to the left, then to the right, and threw him down. His hand twisted in his rope and it snapped both of his forearm bones. It was a clean break, however, so no surgery was required. Will missed the last half of the fall rodeo season.
After high school, he will attend South Dakota State University in Brookings, where he’ll work towards a degree in mechanical engineering. Someday he’d like to open his own shop for aftermarket car performance. He is also good at programming and coding languages and does some of the updating for the Wayne High School website. He plans on riding bulls collegiately.
Will has two older sisters, Mandy and Molly, who are twins and will graduate from college this spring. He is the son of Jeff and Teresa Stabler.
