Brewton Chamber’s PCA Rodeo draws cowboys and crowds for sixth year

Brewton residents turned out in cowboy hats and boots Friday night for the sixth annual Brewton Chamber of Commerce PCA Rodeo, an event that has become one of the signature gatherings on the city’s calendar. Gates opened at 6 p.m., with rodeo events getting underway around 8 p.m., giving families hours to settle in, browse vendor offerings and find their seats before the first riders entered the arena. Cowboys and cowgirls from across the region came to Brewton to compete, hoping for a spot in the PCA rodeo finals, which gives the local event a competitive weight beyond an ordinary county exhibition.

Brewton Chamber of Commerce Director Clay Lisenby said the event has grown each year since it began six years ago. “We’ve come a long way with the support of the city council and mayor of Brewton to help get this facility built,” Lisenby said. “We are in our sixth year and it grows a little each year. It’s family fun entertainment. There aren’t many rodeos of this class in the immediate area. We’ve got beautiful weather here this weekend. Lots of great food.”

A Facility Built for the Event

Lisenby’s reference to the support of the Brewton City Council and the mayor points to the public investment behind the arena that hosts the rodeo. The facility was built with the city’s backing specifically so Brewton could host events of this class, and the chamber’s annual rodeo has been the showcase for what the venue can do. In a city of Brewton’s size, the seat of Escambia County in south Alabama, hosting a professional-level rodeo circuit event is a notable achievement, and the chamber has used the event to draw visitors from across the region into the city for a weekend.

The Professional Cowboys Association circuit that the Brewton rodeo belongs to sanctions events across the Southeast, and riders accumulate points and earnings toward season finals. That structure matters for the competitors: a Friday night ride in Brewton counts toward a season’s standing, so cowboys and cowgirls from Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Georgia plan their weekends around which sanctioned events they can reach. For spectators, that means the riding and roping on display is not a local amateur show but professional competition with real stakes for the riders.

Events and Traditions

Professional rodeo events of the kind featured on the PCA circuit typically include the core competitions that fans travel to see: bull riding, saddle bronc and bareback riding, tie-down roping, steer wrestling, team roping and barrel racing, with money paid out to the top finishers in each. The Friday night crowd in Brewton came for exactly that brand of action, and the clear weather Lisenby described added to the festival atmosphere around the arena.

In addition to the professional riders, this year’s rodeo brought back its Mutton Busting event, where the youngest cowhands ride sheep out of the bucking chute. Mutton busting has become one of the most popular crowd-pleasers at rodeos across the country: small children, usually wearing helmets and protective vests, climb aboard a sheep in the chute, the gate opens, and the audience cheers until the rider tumbles into the soft arena dirt, usually within seconds. The event gives young children a taste of rodeo competition years before they are old enough to ride anything larger, and it has a way of producing some of the loudest cheers of the night from parents and grandparents in the stands.

Brewton’s rodeo fits the character of the city that hosts it. Escambia County sits in south Alabama along the Florida line, a region of pine forests, timber mills and small farming communities where rodeo culture runs deep. Brewton itself is a historic small city built on the timber industry, with a downtown of early twentieth-century commercial buildings and a strong tradition of community events that draw residents from across the county and neighboring Florida panhandle towns like Flomaton and Atmore just up the road. An annual professional rodeo slots naturally into that landscape, alongside the county’s fairs, festivals and youth livestock programs.

The economic effect of an event that “grows a little each year,” as Lisenby put it, compounds over time. Visitors who come to Brewton for a Friday or Saturday night rodeo fill local restaurants before the event, stay in area motels, and stop at fuel stations and shops during their visit. For a chamber of commerce, that is the practical argument for building and maintaining an arena: the event returns visitor spending to local businesses while also giving the city a recognizable annual attraction that builds its reputation across the region.

Family Entertainment in a Rural Tradition

Lisenby’s description of the rodeo as “family fun entertainment” captures why the event has grown steadily in a small city. Professional rodeo offers an evening format that works for all ages, from the mutton busting riders to the veteran cowboys, and it connects younger generations to a rural tradition that remains central to south Alabama’s identity. Many families in Escambia County have direct ties to agriculture and livestock, and the rodeo is one of the few professional-level events that comes to them rather than requiring a drive to Pensacola, Mobile or Montgomery.

The “lots of great food” Lisenby mentioned is part of the draw as well. Rodeo weekends typically bring food vendors to the grounds alongside the arena, and the chamber’s event has used that vendor presence to round out the evening into a full fair-style outing. Combined with pleasant early-season weather, the formula has proven durable: six years in, the event draws the crowds it did at its start plus the growth that has accumulated each year.

Looking Toward the Finals

For the competitors, the path from a Friday night in Brewton runs toward the PCA rodeo finals, where the circuit’s top riders and ropers by season standings converge at the end of the year. Every qualified ride adds to a season’s earnings and points, which is why circuit stops in towns like Brewton carry genuine importance on the regional schedule. Riders in the rough-stock events need qualified rides of eight seconds on bucking horses and bulls; timed-event competitors, the ropers and barrel racers, race against the clock and each other for the fastest runs of the night.

The sixth annual edition confirmed what the chamber has argued since the arena was built: Brewton can host a professional rodeo of this class, fill the stands with residents and visitors, and grow the event year after year. With city council and mayoral support behind the facility and a director committed to expanding the program, the rodeo has secured its place among the annual traditions of south Alabama’s rodeo country, and the mutton busting riders who drew cheers this weekend may be the competitors to watch in a decade’s time.

The growth of the Brewton rodeo also mirrors a broader resurgence of professional rodeo across the Southeast. Regional circuits like the PCA have expanded their schedules in southern Alabama and the Florida panhandle in recent years, as small cities discovered that a sanctioned rodeo can fill an arena on weekends when few other attractions are available. Riders benefit from the denser schedule because it lets them compete closer to home more often, and communities benefit because the events keep entertainment dollars in town rather than sending them to larger cities. Brewton’s decision to build a facility with council and mayoral support anticipated exactly that trend, and the chamber’s event has captured a share of the regional circuit that might otherwise pass Escambia County by.

The roster of competitors traveling to Brewton reflects the geography of southeastern rodeo. Circuit riders crisscross a band of territory running from central Alabama down through the Florida panhandle and across southern Mississippi and western Georgia, competing at stops that range from county fairgrounds to purpose-built arenas. Each stop carries its own character: some are carnival-centered, some are attached to livestock festivals, and the Brewton event has built its identity around the arena itself, the quality of the stock and the family atmosphere that Lisenby emphasized.

Behind the Scenes of a Rodeo Weekend

An event of this scale takes months of planning by the chamber and its volunteers. Stock contractors must be booked to provide the bucking horses and bulls that professional riders draw for their turns, judges and timers must be arranged, announcers hired, and the arena prepared with the footing conditions that keep both animals and riders safe. Insurance, sanctioning paperwork and prize money all have to be in place before the first gate opens. By the time gates opened at 6 p.m. Friday, the work behind the scenes had been underway for most of the year, and the smooth operation the crowd sees is the visible tip of a large organizational effort.

Volunteers from the Brewton business community handle much of that work, from selling tickets to managing vendor space and helping with contestant check-in. For the chamber, the rodeo doubles as a showcase for local businesses, which sponsor events within the program and staff the weekend’s activities. That sponsorship structure is what allows a small city to put up professional prize money and still keep ticket prices accessible for families, which in turn sustains the attendance growth the event has shown every year since it began.

The Mutton Busting Tradition

The return of mutton busting deserves its own note, because the event does something the professional competitions cannot: it puts the youngest members of the audience into the arena itself. Children who participate wear protective gear and ride with the same Pageantry as the professionals, introduced by the announcer, cheered by the crowd and awarded for their efforts, however brief the ride. Rodeo families often trace their beginnings to exactly this kind of first ride, and the event plants the idea in a new generation that the arena is a place they belong.

That pipeline matters for the long-term health of the sport in south Alabama. Youth rodeo programs, high school rodeo associations and college circuits all draw from communities where children got their start on the back of a sheep at events like Brewton’s. A city that hosts a professional rodeo with a mutton busting event is investing in its own future audience and future competitors, and the cheers that greeted the young riders this weekend suggested the tradition is in good hands.

A Weekend for the Whole Region

By the time the final bull was loaded Friday night, the sixth annual Brewton Chamber of Commerce PCA Rodeo had delivered what its director promised: professional competition, family entertainment, good food and beautiful weather. The event’s growth from a first-year experiment to a regional fixture demonstrates what a community can build around a well-run arena, and the riders who earned their pay in Brewton carried away points that matter on the road to the PCA finals. For Brewton, the weekend was another entry in the event’s short but successful history, and the expectation, on the evidence of six straight years of growth, is that next year’s gates will open to an even larger crowd.