67TH ANNUAl JACKRABBiT STAMpEDE KiCKS-OFF SDSU SpRiNG RODEO

By Ariana Schumacher Agweek

BROOKINGS, S.D. — South Dakota State University rodeo athletes kicked off their spring season with their home rodeo on March 31 and April 1, welcoming around 275 competitors from North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

“It’s a lot of fun, definitely a lot of fun to do, especially having all the energy of your home crowd and being in your own arena,” said Chance Grill, SDSU calf roping, team roping and steer wrestling competitor.

For sophomore Rayha Richert, the stampede is her favorite rodeo of the season.

“This rodeo is personally my favorite, which is slightly biased because it’s my home rodeo, but it’s always a lot of fun,” Richert said.

This rodeo brings in crowds of between 3,500 or 4,500 spectators to the stands.

“The Brookings crowd has been around forever, for rodeos and everything like that, especially following SDSU rodeo, the whole region knows that the Brookings crowd is going to be electric, and they know rodeo,” said Ron Skovly, SDSU rodeo coach.

Being a rodeo athlete in college can be challenging, but these competitors say it is worth it.

“I am an exercise science major, so I have a lot of school, plus doing three events, and it gets really stressful with practice and everything, but once you get a system down it flows pretty easy,” Richert said. “I have been doing rodeo since my seventh grade year and it has just grown to be my favorite thing and I don’t think I could see myself not doing it.”

“I’m a student athlete,” Grill said. “I mean I get to do what I love to do and then get to go to school while I am doing it.”

Last fall, the team competed in five rodeos, and now they are able to get back into the rodeo circuit with their home rodeo.

“Half time is over, and we are just kind of getting right back into it again and the team is sitting up in there, top five in the region. But yeah, we’ve got some checking up to do. But we will get there by the end of this season,” Skovly said.

Having a rodeo team on campus helps to carry on the tradition of the state’s official sport, a tradition they hope to continue for generations.

“Just the tradition of where we came from and where we are going now,” Skovly said. “The boosters have grown in the last three or four years, just huge, so we are getting a lot more support and have got plans for facilities in the future.”

The SDSU rodeo team finished the rodeo with the women’s team placing second overall and the men’s team placing fifth overall.

“In the exhibit, you have these poems all around from him that really describe his interbeing and his deep connection with the soil and a deep connection to agriculture and the farmers,” said Tom E. Schumacher, Professor Emeritus SDSU. “It’s quite different from an exhibit that just shows numbers and pictures and so forth, you’ve got someone who is really involved.”

You can also walk through the farmhouse and get a look at what life was like for farm families during the 1920s and 1930s.

“We talk about life on the farm, not only the struggles within having little crops or the drought, but also about the locust,” said McCausland. “We also talk about how many families had to abandon their farms.”

This time period was tragic for South Dakota.

“The erosion and the Dust Bowl was actually more devastating in South Dakota than it was in the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma, but they received most of the media attention during that era,” said McCausland. “So when we wanted to showcase that this was very much a part of South Dakota’s history that people often forget and they think that the soil conservation is a new topic, and it’s not.”

Schumacher says it is unlikely that we will experience another Dust Bowl in South Dakota, unless we forget everything we have learned about soil science and conservation.

“Another ecological disaster could happen, out of the blue,” said Schumacher. “But, we have a lot of information and experiences that have been built up from that and the only way the Dust Bowl will happen again is if we just forget all about it and we ignore what we already know.”

“If you don’t know what’s happened in the past or how people have worked to try to keep the soil going, we will have an ecological disaster, it’s almost guaranteed,” said Schumacher.

“I really want people to realize that what is being discussed about soil conservation is nothing new, but it is very important to know,” said McCausland.

You can visit the exhibit for yourself Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum. This exhibit will be on display at the museum until fall 2024.