A look at Price's Arena's, where it started to the most recent rodeo

The 2024 Shriner's Rodeo recently took place at Price's Arena in Bessemer City.

While the Price family prepares for a summer of youth bull riding, Mike Price, the owner of the arena, took a look back at the beginning.

Price's Arena opened in 1991 with a focus on team penning, a rodeo sport in which riders on horseback have a short amount of time to separate a few individual cattle from a herd and move them into pens.

Price has been a horseman for the majority of his life.

"I've been a horseman for 62 years. I'm 74 years old now," Price said. "I've always loved riding horses. I got into producing shows in 1981."

Before opening Price's Arena, he spent more than three years personally welding the metal that makes up the arena, which holds 40 bulls in the back pen and thousands of fans for every event, he said.

"How would you like to walk out in your backyard, and that's what this is, the arena is in my backyard, and have 3,035 people in your backyard," Price said. "It's a different world. It's like I always tell people, welcome to my world."

The most recent Shriner's Rodeo brough more than 3,000 people to Price's Arena for a good cause, according to Price.

For three years now, the family has worked with the Crowder's Mountain Shrine Club to put on a rodeo from which all proceeds are donated to Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Last year, a child from the Shriners Hospital flew to Gastonia to attend the rodeo, and Price learned that the Gaston County Shriner rodeo is the first rodeo to donate to the hospital in this way, he said.

Over the next few months, Price's Arena will shift focus toward preparing the next generation of bull riders.

The Junior Bullriders Association will be on site May 25, June 1 and 22, and July 27 so young riders can continue competing and sharpening their skills.

"We teach them the procedures of bull riding, the respect, the personality all while they're young... You don't want somebody that's 22 years old to come up and try to get on a bull cause they're gonna get killed. Bull riding is a deadly sport," Price said. "You get hurt, period. The question is and it's always been the story with bull riding, how often will it be that I get hurt, and how bad hurt will I get."

"We have a young man right now from here that's on TV. His name is Clay Guiton, and he started riding bulls out here, learned how, he's 18 years old. He went straight from riding around here, local, to television with PBR. So, he's gone big time, and he's living the cowboy's dream," Price said. "And what is so odd, his dad learned how to ride bulls here years ago when I first started. It's a two-generation deal, the father and the son."

As the lone rodeo arena in Gaston County, Price has met many professional and title winning bull riders like his good friend Jerome Davis, and just as many local cowboys and rodeo enthusiasts.

Price's children and family help run the ranch, and it's a job that never really stops, he said.

Despite the constant nature of the work, Price has tried to slow down some at the arena over the last several years and take time off when he can get it.

Overall, running the arena in his home county all these years, "has been a pleasure," Price said.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: A look at Price's Arena's, where it started to the most recent rodeo