New rodeo takes over at State Fair

YAKIMA -- There won't be a PRCA rodeo at the Central Washington State Fair this year.

But organizers are counting on it being riding-and-roping action, not an acronym, that puts people in the stands. And they say they've lined up something better -- a championship event -- that will do that.

The Oct. 3-4 championship event won't have the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association stamp on it. Instead, it will be the finals of the Professional Western Rodeo Association, a lower-tier professional circuit that is often referred to by its own participants as being an "amateur rodeo" association even though it, too, offers prize winnings.

What will this mean to the people in the seats? Well, they won't see PRCA champions like Bobby Mote and Dan Mortensen, both of whom were in the chutes at the 2007 State Fair Rodeo. But they also won't see as many empty chutes in the rough-stock events, either. Cowboys don't "turn out" -- rodeo-speak for "decide not to show up" -- for championship events.

"It's a good thing," said Yakima team-roper Willy Hart, who serves as the team-roping director on the PRCA's Columbia River Circuit board and yet also regularly competes in Pro-West rodeos.

"They'll be able to draw the same contestants, the same people that compete in the (Columbia River) circuit year-round," Hart said. The State Fair Rodeo, he added, has found it "hard to draw many contestants other than locals. Now it's after the (PRCA season-ending) cutoff, and not many people really care about going because it is after the deadline."

While a few standouts like Mote and Mortensen have used the State Fair Rodeo to try to kick off the next year's rodeo season, the overall number of its contestants has dwindled in recent years. Three years ago, the rodeo drew more than 300 entrants; it dropped to about half of that in 2006 and last year was down to just over 100.

"With the price of fuel, it's a bit pricy for people to travel a long way to come to a rodeo up here in Washington," said fair association president Greg Stewart. "A lot of the guys who were here for our rodeo were Pro-West cowboys. We're going to get the (Pro-West) finals, and since many of them are PRCA cowboys, we'll get the top 10 cowboys and cowgirls from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia.

"With the Pro-West, we hope to be that light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, for all the cowboys in this part of the country. It'll be a nice purse" -- at least $2,001 added in each event, same as the fair rodeo offered in its PRCA days -- "and people won't have to drive for a day and a half to get here. It'll give the local cowboys something to shoot for."

The Pro-West finals have been held in Omak for several years -- generally over the same weekend as the State Fair Rodeo -- after stints in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, Newport and Cheney. Cheney was one of the towns bidding against Yakima for this year's Pro-West finals, according to Pro-West past president Al Earl of Deer Park.

"We've got better potential to have more of a crowd, obviously, built in at Yakima than having a stand-alone event somewhere else," Earl said.

While the current deal between Pro-West and the fair association is "year-to-year at this point," Earl added, "it's the hopes on both sides that it will be a semi-permanent move there. The location of Yakima is absolutely perfect for us, because it's dead-center of where our people are. It's just an ideal spot for people to go to at that time of year -- being able to hit that within a four or five hour drive from pretty much anywhere in the association."

Each day's rodeo is scheduled to have 10 competitors in each of eight events -- the seven usual rodeo events (bareback, saddle bronc, bull riding, steer wrestling, calf roping, team roping and barrel racing), plus breakaway roping, a event in many amateur rodeos that's popular for its speed.

And since it will be the Pro-West finals, contestants are far less likely to skip the event than they might be in an early-October PRCA rodeo that's in a sort of scheduling gray area -- a 2009-schedule rodeo being held before the 2008 National Finals Rodeo, and not conveniently located for any competitor not already living in the Pacific Northwest.

"In the past as a CRC (Columbia River Circuit) rodeo, they had the potential of people turning out," Earl said. "If (compeatitors) are up at a big rodeo in California, they're going to stay down there. This way, (fair rodeo organizers) are guaranteed of having the top 10 people in every event."

Nor are the regional competitors likely to mind being in Yakima instead of Omak in early October.

"It's cold up there," Hart said. "I think this will be the best finals they've ever had."

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