Vince Lombardi, former Green Bay Packers head coach and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame once said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”

That would describe Sulphur cowboy Bryer Prince.

The high school junior has been knocked down a few times. But each time, he battled through adversity and became a three-time state champion bareback rider.

In February, he was severely injured at a rough stock riding clinic, including facial fractures. Once he decided to get back to work, Prince said he felt better than ever. Since March, he has won four of six rodeos and finished second in the other two.

“I got my face smashed in and broke three bones in my cheek,” Prince said. “I was doubting things, but something told me to just keep getting on.

“A couple of weeks went by and everything, I came across a Bible verse, Proverbs 3:5-6. That got me out of a hard place. I was fighting my mind real bad, and I just decided to get on again. I came back, and I was better than before. It really gave me a confidence boost. I started working out pretty every day of the week.”

He first tried bareback riding as a freshman in 2023, and it didn’t go so well. He blacked out coming out of the chute. But it wasn’t his last ride, and he said with practice it eventually got easier.

“I blacked out,” Prince recalled. “I hung off the side of him, and my dad and my brothers and sisters called me ‘side-saddle.’

“They said I was riding side-saddle because I was hanging off the left side. That is how my first ride went. The more I got on it kind of went away, and the more I could see better out in the arena. You are not getting hit with that adrenaline rush that fast and black out.”

Bareback riding is not for the faint of heart. Prince said the event is quite a bit more complicated than using brute force to tame the 1,000-pound-plus horses used for the event.

“It is definitely more technical,” Prince said. “There are a lot of things that go into it. You have your free-arm placement, you have to lift on your rigging, and you have to beat the horse to the ground before his front feet hit the ground.

“There is a lot more that goes into it than what people think. It is not just hold on and nod your head.”

He gets a lot of help from cousins Hadley Prince, a state champion bareback rider, and Scooter Prince, who was the 1994 National High School Finals Rodeo saddle bronc riding champion, plus six-time National Finals Rodeo qualifier James Boudreaux.

“They are always there rooting for me,” Prince said. “(Hadley) always pulls my rigging, jacks with me a little bit and slaps me around and gets me going.

“They are there for me anytime I need it, anything I need. James Boudreaux helps me out a lot. I go over there and get on his bucking machine. That is where I get my practice in.”

Prince has already secured his third consecutive state championship with a 48-point lead over Fisher Burnworth, but that is not going to stop him from trying to keep winning this week at Burton Coliseum. He had a 46-point ride in the first-go round on Thursday and won the second-go round with a 69-point ride Friday morning.

“I basically have it (state championship), but you don’t have it until you have it,” Prince said. “I didn’t come to the finals just to win state. I want to win every round. It is definitely going good for me. It is better than last year.

“Something about this year is just like a boost. I have excelled so much since last year. I can’t explain it.”