ProRodeo Sports News - February 23, 2018

“We’ve always been lucky with the time of year we are,” Lancaster said. “We have a pretty good circuit going at that time, and the cowboys that are in it are in the hunt. … Sometimes the cost of a plane ticket isn’t worth someone coming a few hundred miles or a few thousand miles, so we wanted to make it worth their while.” Cowboys all speak the same language – money. They tend to pick rodeos with the biggest payouts when racing toward a qualification for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. “They like our rodeo and always have, and stepping up and making it enticing with additional earnings made a big play in their decision to come,” Brown said. Just like a rookie cowboy rising in the ranks, a rodeo that’s growing will often look at larger rodeos for ideas for improvement. “We have big goals, and to get to those goals we really looked at rodeos we wanted to emulate and where they were for payouts,” Lancaster said. “We really want to be in the Top 20, or Top 10 eventually, of rodeos in the nation. “We feel we have the support here to make that leap. And we didn’t feel like doing it incrementally made a statement of any kind or would get the attention of the contestants. As most PRCA rodeos know, bareback is a challenging event to fill. We want to stay where we get every event filled every night, and we also want to be able to have people come back MONEYTALKS

here for a championship round. One way to really get that done is to increase the money.” Steer wrestler Rowdy Parrott knew about Kennewick’s reputation for hosting a good rodeo, but he didn’t know it grew the most from 2016 to 2017. Along the way to qualifying for his first WNFR, the Louisiana bulldogger picked up $7,416 for winning Kennewick. “I knew it had gotten better since the year before, but it was always a good rodeo,” Parrott said. “You look at the added money and you want to go to the ones with more money. It’s all about how much you can win to make the Finals. Kennewick had a big role in me making the Finals. That was a good boost and helped me to get to the Finals.” The big paycheck in late August propelled Parrott from 21st to 16th in the PRCAWorld Standings. It was the biggest jump of all the ProRodeo cowboys at a key time in the season. At that time, he was a mere $810 away from breaking into the Top 15, which he eventually achieved before going on to place 12th in the final 2017 world standings. “I was on the bubble and close to making the Finals and that really boosted me in the standings,” Parrott said. “It was awesome to win it, and they gave a cool buckle. It’s awesome because we go to so many rodeos trying to make the Finals, so if you can do good and win that much, it makes it nice.” Volunteers are the driving force behind most rodeos, and that held true for Kennewick and Moses Lake. Preparations for the Kennewick rodeo begin MAKING IT HAPPEN

BY THE NUMBERS Biggest prize money increases from 2016 to 2017: Kennewick, Wash. $98,288 Ponoka, Alberta $42,776 Industry, Calif. $41,836 Moses Lake, Wash. $35,021 Belle Fourche, S.D. $32,720 Glasgow, Mont. $30,479 Prineville, Ore. $30,105 Spanish Fork, Utah $28,247 Crawford, Neb. $27,692 San Bernardino, Calif. $26,975 Phillipsburg, Kan. $25,509 Corpus Christi, Texas $23,239 Idaho Falls, Idaho $22,481 Wichita Falls, Texas $22,338 St. Paul, Ore. $22,013 Joseph, Ore. $21,489 Morris, Manitoba $21,487 Okeechobee, Fla. $20,926 Lufkin, Texas $20,653 Granite Falls, Minn. $20,549 Jackson, Miss. $20,060

Pat Stevens and many other volunteers worked on bleacher repairs before the 2017 Moses Lake rodeo. Photo courtesy Moses Lake Roundup

ProRodeo Sports News 2/23/18

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