Asher Gibbons
Sports Editor
“You’re gonna fall. But you have to accept it. And that’s the whole point. Accepting your mistakes, but moving on,” Campanha Martins said.
Freshman Enzo Campanha Martins has always been an athlete. He’s participated in various sports such as basketball, tennis, dirtbiking, handball and three different martial arts. In October of 2025, Campanha Martins saddled up on his first bull.
Since then, he’s been addicted to the ups and downs that come along with one of the most dangerous sports in the world. However, it took 18 years for him to find his passion for bull riding.
Campanha Martins was born in Franca, Sao Paolo, Brazil and raised three hours north in a small country town called Araras. In this setting, he passionately grew up around the farm and around animals.
Despite the love for the outdoors, life wasn’t always green grass and smiles for Campanha Martins and his family. The troubles started with smaller things, like Enzo’s need for glasses. Then it turned into bigger issues like hernia problems and the removal of 12 total teeth from his mouth.
At age eight, he had a near-death experience where he trapped himself in his mom’s SUV for over 30 minutes, nearly collapsing from heat stroke. An exhaustive amount of negative events occured in his early life, but Campanha Martins did his best to stand tall.
Since his teens, an integral part of his life has been his belief in a higher power. His second near-death experience at age 12 would be the biggest promoter of such, changing his life forever.
While body surfing with his brother and a friend, the three were discontent with the lack of waves they’d been seeing, so they decided to wade deeper into the ocean. As they looked back to land, they’d realized they went out too far. That dawned on them too late.
“And I’m like, oh, crap. I am gonna die,” Campanha Martins said. “Until I fully got swallowed by one of the waves. And I just sank, like I went straight to the bottom. I didn’t have enough energy anymore. And I told myself I was about to die. I remember closing my eyes and I said, God, whatever you are. I don’t know. Like, I have no clue which God you are. If you’re Buddha, Allah, Jesus, I have no clue. But, I haven’t had the chance to tell my parents that I love them.”
As a rock on the bottom of the ocean, there was nothing he could do but pray.
“I asked Him that, if he could give me another chance for me to be alive, that I would love Him. And I would know who he is. I would try to seek him.”
Moments later a hand grabbed Enzo from the abyss of water, put him onto a tube and brought him to shore. The man who saved him … He looked like a normal civilian.
“I was walking back home and I had this heavy feeling in my heart, saying ‘Go back, you forgot your umbrella,’” Campanha Martins said, reciting what the man told him. “But I looked up to the sky. It’s not gonna rain. It’s a perfect, warm day.”
After straying further and further from the beach, the stranger felt the urge to go back intensify. He gave in and decided to collect his dry umbrella. As he returned, that’s when he saw Enzo struggling for breath.
He truly started his following of God three years later, when he came to America for a better education and to achieve his dream of playing basketball at a high level.
Only one of the two would be successful, as Enzo found himself sitting behind players with seniority through his high school career. When he finally did get his chance to start during his senior year, he was told his eligibility to play would run out, forcing him to abruptly end his dream.
“Unfortunately, it was like a sign from God, to be honest. It was like, I don’t want you to be a basketball player. You’re senior, you’re about to go to college. And there was nothing I could do to change my eligibility,” Campanha Martins said.
To him, this was clearly a big slap in his face. But according to Campanha Martins, it taught him not to place his identity on physical things.
“It was really hard for me to just switch sports and think about something else to do because my identity was glued to that sport.”
After his senior year, he returned to his family in Brazil to await his college career in Architecture at FSC. While home, he decided to pay a visit to the rodeo, where his step-sister performed in barrel racing. It was in this environment, he knew he found his next endeavor.
Between the lack of bureaucracy he ran into during basketball and the ironclad mentality the professionals had, Enzo just knew this was what he wanted to pursue as a hobby while at college.
When he got back to America and classes started, Campanha Martins quickly found rodeos in the local Ocala area, where he met his new friends Jayson Ford and Ty Dean, both of whom had multiple years of experience in bull riding. The two took him under their wings and had Enzo on top of a bull in no time.
Before mounting the bull, he was given support in terms of gear and a clear warning: Bull riding is addicting.
Two hours north of Lakeland, at The Rafter Cross County Church in Williston, Campanha Martins took a grip for the first time. That’s when Ty Dean told Enzo that he will fall, and he will accept it and move on.
He hopped on his first bull and gave it a long look. It was a skinny bull, but featured big, long horns, to which Campanha Martins admits he was scared of. He anxiously stalled in the shoot — the waiting area — with the bullfighters waiting for the nod of Enzo’s head to open the gates.
“When you nod your head, it means you’re ready. So you can’t go back. And that’s the time that a lot of bull riders fear,” Campanha Martins said. “It’s like you’re in the shoot and you get ready. Okay, now is the time to nod your head. And now the unpredictable is about to happen.”
He nodded his head and the gates opened. The bull was released and Enzo Camphana Martins was a cowboy. Just eight short seconds later, the buzzer went off, signifying his win.
“I heard the buzz of eight seconds and I’m like, wait, did I stay eight seconds? And I’m like, what? How did that happen? I just take my hand off and if I fell, the bull wasn’t even aggressive, so he just left. And I went on another one right after.”
The second bull he mounted, he didn’t have as much luck, falling like a potato after the bull bucked and leaned to the right.
From that point on, he was committed. Saving up money for gear, attending every event in the Tampa area and learning as much as possible.
Since that first day, the bulls haven’t been too kind, stomping on Enzo on more than one occasion. Rather than complaining, he believes it’s teaching him patience and the cost of making a mistake that only you can take the blame for.
“God kept reminding me. People sometimes have to go through exactly what you did. Go and hit the bottom,” Campanha Martins said. “It’s okay to sometimes wobble in your faith, because you need that to create perseverance, to create more wisdom. To get stronger. Same thing with injuries, that bull riding taught me. You get hurt, you have to slow down. Through that, it shows your perseverance. It shows your character.”
His setbacks haven’t stopped him, not one bit. With each practice comes another lesson in life and in bull riding.
“Most times you just have to nod your head and see what life has to bring to you. And you do something with it. You can’t expect to nod your head when everything is perfect, because it will never happen.”
