Tagg Bond charged out of the chute for his senior season playing football.

The Chetopa senior running back racked up 480 rushing yards and five rushing touchdowns in the team’s 50-23 win over Altoona-Midway. More than that, he took over for senior quarterback Lawrence Holt after he got kicked out of the game midway through it. Bond ended up completing 3 of 7 passes for 137 yards and two touchdown passes.

After returning to his more familiar position in Week 2 against Marais Cygnes Valley, Bond injured his ankle when players rolled up on it early in the second half. Bond and his team have been on a bit of a rollercoaster since then as they lost one-score game late in that one, suffered a blowout loss the next week and recovered with a blowout win in Week 4.

“For the last two weeks, I haven't been as big of a part on the offense just trying to let my ankle heal up a little bit,” Bond said.

But if his team had asked him to push through the injury and carry the load during that time, there’s little doubt that Bond would have done his best to oblige that request.

Bond has already shown that he can power through even the hardest moments, on and off the field. He proved that in May 2023 while competing in the Kansas High School Rodeo Association state finals immediately after a family tragedy.

On May 26 of that year, two of his grandparents and his older brother Colton, who was 21 years old at the time, died in a car wreck in Labette County. The three were driving back home from watching Bond compete at that competition in Mulvane.

Still reeling from the tragic accident, Bond decided to finish competing in the competition the next day.
 

“It was tough, but I knew all of them wouldn't want me to come home and just sit around,” Bond said. “They would want me to stay there for the last day and finish it out and have a good rodeo. Just do what I'd been doing and not change anything up and just keep going at 'em.”

For a family like the Bonds, the rodeo arena became the exact right place to respectively mourn those three family members.

Walking in the footsteps of his father Jim Bond, Colton competed in intercollegiate rodeo for three years prior to the accident. 

Bond said he and his brother used to always compete in different age groups at the same rodeos, until Colton got old enough that he moved up to open rodeos while Bond remained in the junior rodeos. But even with the age gap, his older brother still played a big role in Bond's development competing in the rodeo.

“(Colton) helped me out all the time with my roping and stuff,” he said. “We roped together a lot. He was always the one who would help me and everything. Always try to keep the best horses under me as he could.”

Bond said that his brother trained a lot of roping horses used in rodeo events.

“The last one that he made is the one that I ride now,” he said. “He’s really, really good. We mount a lot of people out on him and it’s just pretty cool to have that horse because he means a lot and is really, really good at what he does.”

To open the event the next day, he delivered a tribute to Colton by leading a riderless horse around the arena. Bond closed the competition out by becoming the state champion in calf roping and earning a spot in nationals.

A year later, Bond returned to the same event and took first place in the all-around competition, including a first-place finish in the saddle bronc riding event. He returned to nationals in July, where he earned a first-place finish in the second round of the calf roping event.
 

Bond said it was the people running the rodeo who came up with the idea to celebrate Colton and his grandparents at the state finals the day after the accident.

“Everybody at the high school rodeos knew him and my grandparents really well,” he said. “It was cool to see how many people really cared and everybody in the stands that we've known for so long, how much they really care.”

Bond felt moved by the gesture, but also said he was not surprised by the powerfully supportive response from the rodeo community.

“Everybody calls it just one big family because everybody’s there to help,” he said. “You’re competing against each other, but everybody’s willing to help everybody.”

Bond said there’s been times when one of horses got hurt, or just was not performing very well on that day or in a particular competition, and one of his rodeo friends let him ride their horse for the event.

“We always do the same, everybody’s always welcome to get on ours,” he said.

Bond also remembers a moment over the summer when he and a few of those rodeo friends had vehicle trouble coming back from a rodeo event four hours away from home. They lost a tire on their single-axle trailer after all the lug nuts snapped off on the hub and it rolled away.

Luckily, it happened right in front of a house of people they’d known for years through the rodeo. They were able to get the horses out of the trailer and put them in a stall. But it was also well past midnight and they had to figure out who to call to help get the trailer fixed and back on the road to get home.

Bond made the call to another rodeo friend, someone who used to live and work with Bond’s brother and currently lived just a few miles away from where they broke down.

“He came out there at two o’clock in the morning and put a whole new hub on our trailer and a brand new tire for us,” he said. “Fixed it all up and sent us on our way.”

It’s this spirit of generosity and community that has turned the rodeo life into something which Bond plans to stick with for as long as he possibly can.

“It’s been really tough, but all the people at the rodeos are really supportive,” he said. “They’re always willing to jump in and that always helps to power through and keep on with life.

“Just keep practicing and trying to do the best you can.”
 

At that time, Bond thought he would keep practicing in regards to just his rodeo skills, working on his Future Farmers of America competitions and staying on track for college. 

Football was not in his plans until the accident caused his life to shift around a bit.

Bond first started playing football when he was in second grade. He started with flag football before eventually moving over to tackle. When he reached junior high, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted his football seasons, as well as his schooling overall. 

Bond was homeschooled during his eighth-grade year. But his parents felt like he was falling behind and decided he needed to return to in-person schooling. 

“I was not the best at being homeschooled,” he said. “I was not very motivated to get my schoolwork done.”

His parents did allow him to decide which school he wanted to go to. They lived in Cherryvale, but Bond ended up choosing a place 20 minutes away and across the state line.

“I always wanted to go to Oklahoma Union because I had already had some buddies that I grew up with that were down there and I always really liked that school,” he said.

When he started his freshman year at that high school in South Coffeyville, Okla., Bond planned to just focus on rodeo and his Future Farmers of America competitions instead of playing high school sports.

“Then my sophomore year, they convinced me to come play again and I’m glad they did,” he said. 

Although the team ended up going winless that season, Bond still got back a little bit of his itch to play football. But after the accident, he and his parents moved from Cherryvale to his grandparents’ former home east of Edna.

Now Bond was further away from his high school of choice. He was also just 12 minutes away from Chetopa.

“They had a lot of good things to offer me,” he said.
 

His dad had went to school with Craig Bagshaw, the USD 505 district superintendent for Chetopa. Bond also had the opportunity to craft his schedule at Chetopa in a way where he could graduate this December, while only needing one English class and spending the rest of school day in shop class during his final semester. 

When he started going to Chetopa in fall of 2023, Bond did not actually plan to keep playing football.

Then he started hearing about the team’s new coach who was hired shortly before Bond transferred there. Also entering his first year at Chetopa was Tommy Heatherly, a former NFL punter who played for the Miami Dolphins.

“They told me that he was a punter in the NFL,” he said. “I thought that was really cool and I wanted to meet him up at the school, see what kind of guy he was and see what he was all about.”

By the time he was done speaking with Heatherly during their informal meet-and-greet, Bond was already sold on joining the team. Mostly, Bond liked the coach's attitude and demeanor.

“Whatever he says goes,” Bond said. “Knowing that a guy with that kind of experience and that has been around all those big name guys and witnesses it all, it makes it really easy to respect him and respect what he says.

“He didn’t really have to try to recruit me. I just was like, ‘It’d be pretty cool to play for a guy like that.’”

Bond said it was still a little bit of culture shock joining a six-man team after previously playing 11-man football.

“The defense is very strange,” he said. “Everybody being eligible and all that, that was hard to adjust to. It took me a lot of games to figure out how to play. When a team runs a spread defense and everybody’s on a route, it gets kind of confusing. There’s a lot of people moving around.”

Bond said he found the best way to adapt was just watching lots of film and trusting his teammates on the field.

“Just relying on my teammates that they were going to do their jobs and just having to worry about mine,” he said. “Not worrying about what everybody else was doing. Then lots of film to figure out where people are going and making sure I’m not lost out there.”
 

During his first season with the team in 2023, Chetopa started the year 4-0 on the way to 5-3 record after only winning one game over the previous two seasons, including a winless campaign in 2022.

This year Chetopa has started the year 2-2, but the Green Hornets are hoping they can build on last week’s 60-0 win over South Coffey County. The team is also hoping that they’ll be in better shape with Bond getting closer to 100% after resting up his ankle over the last couple weeks.

“Last week, (his ankle) was feeling pretty good and I played that outside contain and made some tackles,” he said. “We’ve got a really good linebacker, so he makes it pretty easy on me.”

The team is hoping to finish the season strong with Bond healthy down the stretch. Bond and his teammates also feel like they’re better than their 2-2 record indicates.

Against Marais de Cygnes Valley in Week 2, the team reached the 5-yard line late in the game looking to score the game-tying touchdown with a chance to win it on the extra point. But Chetopa’s offense couldn’t get the next snap off in time to run another play, instead losing 26-20.

Bond is excited that the team will get a rematch with the Trojans at home in Week 8. 

Next week, Chetopa will host a 3-1 South Barber team heading into the game on a three-game win streak. South Barber opened the season with a 56-6 loss to Cunningham but looked strong heading into this one after a 53-8 road win over Moscow last week.

“I really do believe we are one of the toughest teams out there, even with our limited roster,” Bond said. “Everybody on this team has worked real hard conditioning this summer and everything, getting in shape because we knew it was going to be limited numbers. Everybody had to be in the best possible shape because nobody can really take plays off, or come out for a couple snaps.

“It don’t work very well playing 5-on-6.”
 

Bond sees that level of dedication from his teammates as something that perfectly matches with the dedication he’s always put toward rodeo competitions.

“I've practiced it a lot, so a lot of blood, blood sweat and tears have gone into it,” Bond said. “Just the rush you get while doing it, and how much work it takes to be able to be good enough to compete with some of the top guys. It takes a lot.”

Both sports also require a certain mental strength in order to maintain that level of dedication.

“Honestly, the mental strength that it takes to be able to go out there by yourself and have the self-motivation to go out there and practice, that really runs into football,” Bond said. “Just having the mental toughness to be able to make a big play, or make a big stop.”

Whether it’s wrestling down a running back or a steer, Bond knows that its the preparation that allows you to deliver when the lights turn on for the actual competition.

“With the steer wrestling, it’s kind of just an instinct,” Bond said. “It just all happens really fast. With tackling a big running back, I guess it’s instinct, too. But it’s just you got to have a lot of trust in your practicing and all that.”

Although some of the strength, both physical and mental, built up doing both of these sports complement each other, the schedule can often be in conflict. With the rodeo competitions taking place on the weekend, Bond said he tries to practice rodeo skills, such as calf roping, a few times during the week, which he is able to do at his house.

“We got an arena and everything it takes to rope,” Bond said.

Whenever he can, Bond tries to practice roping between when his school day ends and when football practice begins.

“Time’s always tight, but I try to make it work the best I can,” Bond said. “I don’t get to practice as much as I want during the football season, but I practice a lot when I get out of football and during the summer and spring.”

“It’s just about being mentally tough about it, not letting it get to you is a big part of it,” Bond said. “Just kind of power through it.”

Right now, Bond wants to power through his ankle injury, help his team finish this season strong and make a push in the playoffs. After that, Bond will turn his attention to college plans for the spring.

Bond is still undecided on which school he’ll attend, but he plans to compete for a collegiate rodeo team, which trims down the search to about 135 colleges and universities involved in the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, or NIRA. 

“I got a lot of colleges that want me to come visit and stuff,” Bond said. “I have one that’s kind of ahead of the rest right now, but I want to go look at all of them and see what they all have to offer and everything before I make a decision.”

Bond wants to find a school with the right rodeo coach, which he describes in a way that sounds a lot like the horse-riding version of his football coach. Bond wants his new coach to have a wealth of experience at the highest levels of competition, someone who has “been there and done all that stuff.” 

“It’s nice to be around guys that have been that far,” Bond said. “They have all kinds of opportunities for you. You just gotta be willing to work for it and they can help you as much as one possibly can help you. Then the rest is up to you.”

The school will also need to offer his preferred field of study. Bond plans to pursue a degree in farm and ranch management.

“My first plan is to rodeo until I can't physically do it anymore,” Bond said. “Then I would like to have enough money where I can buy a nice place, and have all my own stuff and a nice ranch.”