The sun sat low in the sky one Wednesday evening, casting long shadows behind the cowboys gearing up to compete in the saddle bronc competition at the Hart Ranch in Rapid City, S.D. Thayne Elshere, 18, of Sturgis, S.D., sat in a lawn chair surrounded by other bronc riders, enjoying the downtime while they tried roping some of the kids running around behind the bucking chutes. Their laughter, mixed with the stomping of hooves and light chatter, filled the air before being interrupted with the first call out of the night from rodeo announcer Jared Slagle.
“Who here is from Minnesota?” Asked Slagle to a section of fans cheering within the crowd. “Who here is from California? Nebraska? Texas?” Slagle followed up as more sections of the crowd erupted into cheers. Meanwhile, behind the chutes, Elshere and a handful of other cowboys jumped up and down while slapping their inner thighs, a common practice used among riders to maximize adrenaline levels before a ride.
“I've been riding for a while, since about eight years old,” says Elshere, a recent graduate of Sturgis Brown High School. “I just started riding calves and bull riding. And then my freshman year started bronc riding. So it just kind of picked up from there.”
Elshere, of Sturgis, competes regularly in rodeos hosted in South Dakota and in the general midwest region.
Rodeos are the official state sport of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Texas.
“The energy that comes from [the fans] and of course the rodeo stock and the contestants. You know, there's just something for everybody at a rodeo so that's probably what I love most,” said Jared Slagle. Slagle is a regular rodeo announcer and music tech for the Wild West Wednesday Rodeo series in Rapid City, S.D.
While the rodeos may come to an end, that doesn’t mean it’s over for the fans or competitors.
“It’s all just a big family,” said Tate Rhoads, a regular rodeo clown across the midwest region. “When we're all done here we're all probably gonna sit around, hang out, eat some food, drink some cold drinks, and just have a good time. Because we're all probably gonna be together somewhere down the road again.”
