The Alpha Epsilon Sigma club for agricultural and environmental science majors will conduct its annual fundraiser.
The 58th Annual ACU Rodeo: They Call The Thing Rodeo, will be this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the horse barn at the Taylor County Expo Center. The horse barn is located directly across from Shotwell Stadium.
The money raised at this event will help the AES on different events such as their Critter Dinner and Beast Feast, as well as service projects the club wants to hold for homecoming and graduation.
Most ACU Social Clubs are planning on having teams compete in the rodeo.
Will Morales, the co-vice president for the event and junior environmental science major from Rotan said, “It’s a great opportunity for individuals to step out of their comfort zone and do something they might not normally do.”
The rodeo will include several events, such as calf branding, double mugging and steer saddling for the guys. A calf scramble, udder madness (contestants try to clip clothespins to the udder of a goat), and goat dressing (contestants try to dress a goat). Individual competitions include the Roughie competition, which will be steer riding, and the Queen competition which will have a goat flank and tie.
Merissa Ford, senior agriculture business major from Maple Valley, Washington, said, “The rodeo is a total blast. It’s a time for the student body to get dirty, chase around animals, laugh really hard and make some memories.”
ACU students Tiffany Lutz, Riley Morrow and Emily Schuster are all on the board for planning the event.
Kathleen Henderson, senior environmental science major from Rockport, is in charge of the advertising for the rodeo. She designed, printed and distributed all posters and rodeo banners. She put together a slide to show in Chapel and for the ACU log in events page.
Riley Morrow, freshman animal science major from Bellvue, Colorado, is the co-vice president of the rodeo this year.
“A lot went into the planning of the rodeo. Planning started months in advance with the coordination of marketing, registration, live stock and other various details,” Morrow said.
Admission to compete in the rodeo is $50 per team of 4 participants. For spectators tickets will be sold for $5. There will be a dance following the rodeo at no extra charge to anyone who buys a ticket.
T-shirts will be sold for $10 to participants and non-participants.
The prizes this year for the overall team are free rodeo shirts. The prize for individual is enough to buy a pair of boots.
For more information or to register a team, the AES will have a table setup in the Campus Center from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m until Thursday.
“I think this year’s rodeo is going to be really exciting. A lot of hard work has been put in by a lot of good people and it’s because of their efforts that events like this happen,” said Emily Schuster, junior animal science pre-vet major from Red Oak.
