World standings leaders Dustin Egusquiza and Levi Lord took home the 2024 Texas Circuit year-end title with a historic $60,782.21 won on the year after competing at the Oct. 8-11 Texas Circuit Finals in Waco.
The win marks Egusquiza’s third Texas Circuit year-end title and, for Lord, it’s his first Texas title but fourth circuit title overall.
“It’s pretty awesome to come back,” Lord, 28, said. “I won the Badlands three times, and then I kind of got away from going to any circuit finals. To win two circuits is kind of cool.”
Even though the pair is ranked No. 1 in the world right now, Egusquiza has a sincere appreciation for the level of competition the Texas Circuit delivers.
“It’s not the main goal, obviously, but to come out on top of the Texas Circuit is coming out on top of a pretty tough group of guys,” Egusquiza, 29, said. “It’s not easy to win the Texas Circuit; you have to win a lot, and most of the best team ropers live in Texas. With a setup like that, even the guys that didn’t make the NFR this year could go 3.0 seconds at any time.”
Egusquiza and Lord’s big year
While getting to rope in the bright lights of Vegas is the top priority for Egusquiza and Lord each year, getting into Waco made the list of 2024 goals because of the NFR Open in Colorado Springs.
“Getting into Colorado Springs, I think, is worth taking a chance on a little bit less money at four or five rodeos just to have a chance to go,” Egusquiza said. “It’s such a good rodeo and at an important time of year. We had to watch this year and that wasn’t really fun. So, we’re looking forward to getting to go there in July.”
The team has been roping together for two years, and in their first year as partners they decided to skip the circuit race, hesitant to official 15 rodeos in Texas. But as more of the smaller rodeos in the circuit begin to add better money, the incentive to go again has been increasing.
Egusquiza and Lord had $4,000 won on the circuit before 2024 even started and, when it did, they went on an absolute tear in the winter. In January, their Sandhills Stock Show & Rodeo win in Odessa paid $7,313 a man. Then they won Rodeo Austin for $12,792 each in March, which they followed with an $11,069 week at the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo.
When Egusquiza and Lord got to Waco for the Texas Circuit Finals last Tuesday, they already had the year-end won. Because Circuit Finals earnings count toward 2025, though, they wanted to leave with as much money as possible. They won the first two rounds for $2,331 a piece, but they slipped a leg in the third round. As the teams behind them began to fall apart, however, they remained second in the average race despite the penalty.
“The last round there were only two clean times when we rode in, and there was only one team behind us,” Egusquiza explained. “It was pretty clear cut: just get the steer caught, win a little bit of round money and win second in the average and get out of there. It wasn’t in our style, really, to just lay up, but you don’t want to mess up in that situation.”
They finished the rodeo with a $583-a-man run in the fourth round to put them second in the average for $3,496 each, which contributed to thier circuit-season total of more than $60,000.
“It’s pretty crazy to win that much in one year on the circuit,” Lord said. “To do that at just circuit rodeos—I’ve never heard of anybody doing that. It worked out pretty good for us. It seemed like every time we were at a big circuit rodeo we did good. Texas has a few big ones, and we seem to do good at all of them, so we ended up getting to quite a lot of money.”
