ROBERT PIERCE

    • Leader & Times

For rodeo contestants, the big stage of the National Finals Rodeo is a little more than a month away, and while most eyes are on the final world standings to see who will punch their ticket to the year’s last competition, rodeo committees and contract personnel recently found out the results of the year-end industry awards.

“Their hard work behind the scenes keeps the sport alive all season long,” Women’s Professional Rodeo Association (WPRA) spokesman Ann Bleiker said in a press release from the organization. “As we close the book on the 2026 regular season, we officially kick off reward season in professional rodeo.”

The Seward County PRCA Rodeo, started in 2014, was named one of the honorees, receiving the WPRA’s Small Rodeo of the Year award for rodeos with prize money of $5,000 or less.

Since its inception, Seward County Rodeo Association (SCRA) Secretary and Treasurer Reneé Haralson said the local rodeo has grown every year in terms of fans, contestants and sponsors.

“Our sponsors are fantastic,” she said. “It’s been great.”

Though the Seward County PRCA struggled out of the gate during its first four to five years, Haralson said the rodeo has been great since then.

“Not that it wasn’t great before, but it was us getting it all put together, getting our system going,” she said. “It’s been fantastic. We’re ready to see it last a lot longer. We’re going to have to get some younger people involved though.”

Longtime rodeo announcer Doug Mathis, who nominated the local rodeo, called to congratulate Haralson, and after thanking him, Haralson said local organizers thought the news was great.

“He said, ‘Somebody had to nominate you, and the WPRA through the contestants and through the board members are the ones who decide who gets this,’” Haralson said. “Throughout the United States, we received the Small Rodeo of the Year.”

Naturally, Haralson said the award was quite an honor.

“We’re stoked,” she said.

Haralson said Seward County’s rodeo is not yet the community stronghold such as longer running rodeos in Dodge City and Guymon, Okla., but the WPRA award is a start in that direction.

“Both of them have won some of these awards, so for us to just be 12 years old, that’s pretty cool,” she said. “We’re quite honored. Somebody’s looking at us. Somebody’s looking at Liberal, Kansas, the Seward County rodeo.”

Haralson said following the first editions of the local rodeo, the event has begun to turn a profit in more recent years.

“We made it through it,” she said. “I was cringing a little bit this year because Saturday night, which is our big night, we did get rain, and we didn’t have quite the crowd we normally have. I was afraid that was going to really going to put a bite in us, but we came out just fine. We’re going into the new year just fine. We’re quite pleased and very thankful to our fans and our sponsors.”

This year’s PRCA finished its performances in mid-August, and Haralson said organizers are already planning for next year’s rodeo.

“We get excited early on,” she said. “It’s an all year deal. We don’t stop at any given point.”

Haralson said she was quite honored, humbled and thankful to receive the award, and she credited many people with making the local rodeo a success.

“Without our sponsors, without our fans and definitely without our volunteers, we couldn’t do it,” she said. “One of the things they base the award off of is friendliness, accommodation. There’s different things they look for, and that all falls back not just on our board. We have at least 50 volunteers out there every night working in one area. They also have shared with being friendly, helpful. They’re all great.”

Haralson, along with fellow SCRA members C.J. Wettstein and Preston Scott will travel to Las Vegas to receive the award Dec. 3 at the South Point Casino.

When the local PRCA started, Haralson said organizers talked about where the rodeo would be in five to 10 years.

“We were thinking we could get a three-day rodeo or a four-day rodeo,” she said. “Our goal at the time was to be like Guymon. I’m not saying we can’t be, but 12 years into it, it still needs   a little work. We want to grow. If we could add an extra performance in there, it would be great. A Sunday afternoon would be good.”

For now, however, Haralson said organizers simply want to build on the two nights the local rodeo already has.

“We’re quite happy and ready for anything that comes our way,” she said. “If anybody has any suggestion, we’re always open to hear that too. It’s not like it’s our way or the highway for sure. We’re still learning.”

Haralson, though, said organizers are looking to grow the rodeo’s purse, which in turn grows the number of contestants and performances for the event, and she said getting more contestants is a necessity.

“Talking to our stock contractors, the announcers and other people, the only way to do that is to be able to up our purse,” she said. “For us to get the Small Rodeo of the Year, we had to be under $5,000. We’re just under that.”

Haralson said SCRA members are looking to up the purse for the rodeo in the next two years.

“We’ve upped it several times since we started,” she said. “We don’t do great numbers, but numbers we can sustain. Once we up it, we sure don’t ever want to lower it. We want to be able to sustain it. If we can get that working, we can probably add another performance.”

Haralson was unsure how many of the local PRCA’s contestants qualified for the NFR, but since Seward County’s rodeo comes later in the year, they usually know if they are qualified by then.

“By the time our rodeo shows up, if they’re in the running, they’re going to rodeos that pay better so they can make more money to make that trip,” she said.

As organizers usually start planning for the next year’s rodeo after the completion of this year’s, Haralson said work is already being done for the 2027 edition.

“We’re going to bring back the same stock contractor,” she said. “We’ve got e-mails out for an act to come in and perform for our intermission. We’re looking at several different options right with some trick riders. We had one years ago. We thought we could find some to bring back.”

Asked what made the award possible, Haralson said much hard work from many great people, and she said though the rain presented a bit of a challenge, precipitation has been part of prior rodeos as well.

“We’ve been rained out before,” she said. That hurts.”

However, Haralson said rodeo workers and volunteers continue putting on a great show for crowds, and she credited much of the hard work to the businesses and people of Seward County.

“The people here are great,” she said. “They’re super. They’re very supportive. They’ve definitely been supportive of the rodeo, and we totally appreciate it. If it wasn’t for them, we would’ve quit a long time ago, but they keep coming back every year. We’re going to keep doing it as long as they keep showing up.”

Along with the growth of contestants and rodeo fans, Haralson said the Seward County PRCA is growing in the number of places both of those come from for the event.

“We’ve had people here from Australia,” she said. “We get the ZIP codes, and we go back through them. We’ve had them from Arizona, New Mexico. We’ve had a lot from all over. I’m stoked they’re here. It’s with the competitors too. We have competitors from Canada and Australia. That’s pretty awesome they come to our little rodeo. They could go anywhere else.”

As if rodeo organizers were not motivated enough to put on a good show, Haralson said the WPRA award gives them an extra push to make future editions of the PRCA even better.

“We’re going to keep trying,” she said. “We’re going to keep working on it. This at least gave us that feather in our hat that said we must be going in the right direction.”