“A new website is available for high school and junior college rodeo contestants searching for their next level of education where they can be a rodeo team member,” according to Suzan Adams, Junction City, secretary of the Kansas High Rodeo Association.
Purpose of the site, www.rodeorecruiting.com, is to provide a central location where rodeo athletes can post their profile information to be recruited by senior college rodeo coaches.
“Students can post their accomplishments along with pictures and videos,” explained Adams.
The site is similar to those for recruiting other sports such as football and basketball. “This one provides the same opportunity to rodeo athletes,” Adams noted.
“It is focused on spreading the word to rodeo athletes and contacting every university rodeo program in the nation, so each senior college can easily promote their program and connect with the talented rodeo athletes,” Adams detailed.
The idea grew from frustration with the current process of high school and junior college rodeo athletes and senior colleges trying to locate each other.
From the student athlete point of view, they had to go to each university’s website and hope to find the rodeo program online and then make notes on each one.
At that point, the rodeo athlete would send a resume, pictures and a video and then hope to hear back from the university’s rodeo coach.
“From the college rodeo coach standpoint, they needed to attend high school rodeos to ‘scout’ for athletes and also try to contact state high school secretaries to get a contact list for seniors in their high school rodeo association,” Adams explained.
“Very few secretaries would respond to the request, and records indicate that more than half of the videos sent in by rodeo athletes were in the incorrect format and couldn’t be viewed by the rodeo coach,” according to Adams. “This site is a win-win solution for both the universities and the athletes.”
Once the athlete is a member, they are able to search the universities and find out what each college has to offer such as size of the rodeo team, practice facilities, scholarships available, etc.
When the universities join, they have full access to the student athlete profiles that contain biographical sketches, pictures, videos and contact information.
There is also a bulletin board section where both rodeo athletes and senior college rodeo team coaches can post specific requirements that they are seeking.
“Additionally, parents spend less time travelling, and less money on promoting their children’s accomplishments, and it can all be done with the ease of a personal computer,” Adams verified.
“Every college program has had those prospects that ‘slipped through the cracks,’ but the site minimizes the chance from this ever happening again,” she emphasized.
A free classified ad section is an additional benefit available to student and university members.
On the Kansas State University page, there are details about the university enrollment and tuition, but probably more importantly to those interested in being on the rodeo team are competition details, practice facilities, related curriculums that might be of special interest to rodeo participants and rodeo scholarships that are available.
Objective listed for the K-State Rodeo Team are to: “Promote and educate the history, heritage and tradition of rodeo to students and the general public. Provide opportunities for students to become actively involved in rodeo. Provide practice and coaching to students desiring to improve skills in rodeo.” There are also K-State Rodeo Team website and Facebook links listed.
Information about this service for high school and junior college rodeo cowboys and cowgirls and universities with rodeo teams is available at www.rodeorecruiting.com, emailing info@rodeorecruiting.com, or by contacting Adams atkhsrarodeo@gmail.com. Her phone number is 785-238-7192.