Golf’s a Hobby, Bull Riding Is Adam Phillips’s Career

When talking of his recent state high school bull-riding and bareback-riding championships, Adam Phillips, a Ross School junior who shares Shinnecock and Navajo heritage, said the other day that he was the fourth generation in his family to pursue rodeo sports. His maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were ranchers and cowboys in New Mexico, he said. And it is in New Mexico where the national high school-age championships are to be held, in Farmington, from July 18 to July 26. To help raise money to pay for his trip and expenses, a chicken barbecue is to be held at the Shinnecock Nation reservation in Southampton this Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with tickets priced at $10 for adults and $8 for children. Asked at Ross’s Wellness Center how he came to be a bull rider, Phillips, who also was the state’s highest point-getter in his division and won rookie-of-the-year honors, said, “I got on a sheep when I was 5.” Had he been bucked off? “Yes, but I got back on.” He then “took a break,” he said, until the age of 8, when he “got on a calf at the reservation. A year later, I started with steers, and at 9 I was competing.” He is 17 now, and has been traveling widely to compete in various rodeos during his years at Ross, which he entered as a ninth grader...EastHamptonStar