Philomath Frolic and Rodeo board president Alyssa Collins said this year’s three-day celebration went smoothly, crediting changes to gate operations, a new dance and afterparty lineup, and a reworked hospitality setup for helping the event run more efficiently than in past years.
The 73rd annual Frolic and Rodeo ran July 9-11 with Friday and Saturday night rodeo performances both selling out — a repeat of last year’s numbers in the arena’s second season since a major grandstands expansion and upgrade.
“I think overall it went really well,” Collins said. “We made some changes for this year as far as our main entry gate and how we really worked hard on making sure that our spectators got in on a timely manner, and that our sponsors had their own entrance. And I think overall, it went really, really well. We didn’t have the long lines that we had last year, which was amazing.”
Among the changes this year was the addition of an all-ages Family Day afterparty on Thursday with a DJ and photo booth in the Yew Wood Corral beer garden, along with a 21-and-over Friday and Saturday night dance featuring the band Countryfied. Collins said the response was strong enough that the board plans to bring the format back.
“Based off of the comments that I got that day, I even got some comments on Friday, and then I had a few people actually reach out to me Monday, letting me know how much they absolutely enjoyed that,” Collins said in reference to Family Day events.
She pointed to one family that has volunteered with the Frolic for years, saying their 13-year-old son had “always been envious growing up and being around there” and was thrilled to finally be able to take part in Thursday’s all-ages event with his parents.
“I think it’s definitely something that we’re probably going to continue,” Collins said.
The board also reworked how it handled hospitality for contestants, volunteers and sponsors after last year’s combined setup proved to be a lot to manage in one space.
“Last year we had the hospitality tents that were both for contestants, volunteers and our sponsors, and it was a little overwhelming — in a good way overwhelming,” Collins said. “We just realized that we probably need to separate it out just to make it run more smoothly and so that everybody gets a good experience.”
This year, a larger sponsor hospitality tent near the main stage served sponsors and front-end volunteers separately from contestants and the Frolic brought in a caterer to cook on-site.
“I think that also helped make things run a lot smoother as well,” Collins said. “They were there on site cooking the food and we were able to shuttle it back and forth between the two tents.”
Volunteer numbers held steady with past years, Collins said, but the board made some adjustments to where volunteers versus paid event staff were deployed — particularly when it came to younger volunteers working crowd-facing roles like ushering.
“The hard thing is that you run into a situation where you’ve got younger kids working with adults in the crowd, and sometimes adults are not always the nicest, or they don’t receive feedback from younger individuals very well,” Collins said. “So we looked at that a little differently this year and we did make some changes and had some more event staff handling those situations just to avoid negative situations.”
The board and committee chairs gathered July 15 for what Collins called their “good, bad and ugly” meeting, a wrap-up session held every year shortly after the rodeo to review each area of the event — from security and ticketing to sponsor relations, restrooms and the rodeo performances themselves — before making changes for the following year.
“We literally break it down,” Collins said. “And then we say, OK, what are the good things? What are the bad things? And what just absolutely fell short? And then that way we can really address those items moving forward.”
Collins said the board takes that feedback seriously because of what the event means to Philomath as a whole.
“We know that what we do and the job that we do on that rodeo reflects on our entire community,” Collins said. “We take the information back, we make the changes necessary so that we can always provide an excellent opportunity for economic growth as well in our community. … We’re all very passionate about this rodeo in our community and we just hope that we continue to make a positive impact and continue to provide the best rodeo we can.”
