Rockitman Prepares for Launch

“Our whole relationship has been based on competition,” Becca Webster says. Her husband Dustin quickly retorts, “Well, no guy wants to get beat by a girl. There’s a pride thing going here!”

Fortunately, as partners on the Red Bull RockCrawling Team, the Websters use their competitive energy to support one another — and it seems to be working. Dustin’s accomplishments include winning the CalROCs Season Championship, the W.E. ROCK Western National Championship Finals, and the Australian Championships, while Becca has already captured Women’s National Championships in every class possible and defeated both men and women to take the 2005 W.E.ROCK World Unlimited title. It’s hard to believe that only a few years ago, the pair was known not for driving over rocks, but for diving off them.

From Cliff Diving

Becca and Dustin, both born in 1968, got acquainted doing shows as members of the U.S. High Diving Team. They married in 1991 and now reside just northeast of San Diego in prime rockcrawling country.

Dustin’s competitive diving results were incredible. He set a record for most gold medal finishes in international competition with 15 championship wins, including two World Championships, three World Cup victories, and a gold medal at the Acapulco Cliff Diving Championship.

Becca, on the other hand, was finding the competitive arena to be frustrating. “I wasn’t allowed to compete with the men!” she remembers. “They would only let me do exhibitions.”

Dustin chimes in, “But she did do women’s events in Acapulco, and she was only the second woman in history to dive from the top of the cliff there.” He was proud of her then, and he’s proud of her now.

To Rockcrawling

For Dustin, the move from cliff diving to rockcrawling came naturally. “I bought my first 4x4 to locate cliffs to jump from,” he explains. “I kept upgrading the vehicle to find harder cliffs. When competitions started to form, I was primed to get involved.”

Becca’s transformation didn’t come so easily. “She despised the sport!” Dustin laughs. “When I’d come home from a contest, all she’d see were repair bills!”

Becca nods ruefully, “That’s true — until he signed me up for a women’s competition.” Becca had never seen a rockcrawling event, but Dustin was convinced that in a contest her competitive drive and skill at listening to a coach would take over. He lured her on an “outing,” and once they were on the road, he explained that he had entered her in the 2002 Women’s Nationals.

“It was unbelievable,” Becca grins. “We had all of fifteen minutes in the parking lot to practice, but of course I wanted to win!” She came in second, just one point behind first. “Right then, we knew she was a natural,” Dustin adds.
The folks at Red Bull (who had sponsored Dustin in cliff diving) realized that together, Dustin and Becca were something special, and the Red Bull RockCrawling Team was born. Becca returned to Nationals in 2003 to win the Stock Mod class, captured the Pro Mod title in 2004, and earned the Unlimited crown in 2005. In 2006, she again captured the Pro Modified Title and in early 2007 won the W.E. ROCK Pro Women’s Unlimited title. That win made five national titles in a row for Becca!

The team most often competes at the radical Unlimited level, where anything goes: “It’s a wild concept. We have spotters on foot to help us navigate, but often the stuff we’re climbing is so vertical that the spotters can’t walk up – they have to go around and meet us,” explains Dustin, who drives the #747 Red Bull RockIt.

It’s obvious that Becca, who drives the #88 Red Bull RockHer II (which debuted in 2006), is thriving in a discipline where she can finally compete with the men. “Focusing on the win – that’s our attitude,” Becca says. “We do the most possible to get to the top of the podium, but in the end, even a loss isn’t so bad when we’re doing what we love and have such a large number of great fans right there beside us!”

The Red Bull RockCrawling Team’s biggest fans are Dustin and Becca’s young sons — Garet and Chase — and between parenting and competing, it’s a nonstop schedule for the Websters. The competitive season spans February through November, allowing only two months for rebuilding their vehicles in between. “I put in about 120 hours of work per week,” Dustin notes. “I like to say that we’re adrenaline entrepreneurs.”