79th annual Sallisaw Lions Club Rodeo will begin Thursday

We’re approaching the first week of August, so you all know what that means. It’s rodeo time!

The 79th annual Sallisaw Lions Club Rodeo will begin Thursday and end its three-day run that following Saturday.

“It’s always a lot of work this time of the year,” Sallisaw Lions Club Rodeo Chairman Marty Abell said. “It’s all coming together. We’re starting to get everything lined out. We’re ready to get it going. We’re looking forward to it.”

While the Sallisaw Lions Club has not always been a part of the event, it has has been one of, if not the most, major part of the local civic organization for about four decades.

“It’s something we’ve been involved with for 40 years or so,” Abell said. “In the late ’80s, we kind of took over everything. We ran the concessions for a while. way before my time, The Sequoyah County Round-Up Club got with Gus Perry, who was one of our older members of the club, and asked if we could take it over Compared to a lot of Lions Clubs in the country, especially in our area, a lot of them have to do multiple fundraising events throughout the year. We just kind of put all our cards on the table in one big event like this. The goal is to raise enough money to fund everything we want to fund and participate in the rest of the year. It’s worked out so far. I would say there’s 15 to 20 (projects) every year that we’re a part of. There’s probably about 10 things we consistently give to on a regular basis.”

Abbel said there will be about 200 to 300 cowboys and cowgirls competing on some of the most award-winning animals available thanks to Kevin Hampton and the Hampton Rodeo Company.

The three nights of rodeo competition with some of the best in the business won’t be the only thing happening during the annual three-day event.

“We have the mutton busting for the kids at 6:30 p.m. before the rodeo starts (each night),” Abell said. “We have the parade at 5:30 p.m. Thursday on the first day of the rodeo. Everybody starts lining up about 5 p.m. Usually, Kim (Girdner) and Dylan (Abbott) kind of help line those folks up.Typically, it’s firemen and police up at the front, everybody else fills in the middle and we have the horses in the back for obvious reasons. If you ride a horse in the parade, you get a free ticket to the rodeo that night. On Friday and Saturday, the horses that ride in the grand entry each night will get a free entry into the rodeo for that night. Dr. Paula Haraway with the Sequoyah County Animal Advocates approached me. They’re going to put on like a children’s bullfighting contest, so they will run out there and assist with the mutton busting on Friday and Saturday nights.”

If that isn’t enough, bring on the bands!

“Both Friday and Saturday nights, after the rodeo will be dances — probably around 10:30 p.m., Abell said. “We’ll have bands on Friday and Saturday night. Friday night will be Osage County, and Saturday night will be Potential Getaway Drivers.”

Abell said the financial impact on Sallisaw will be enormous.

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “Being involved in the (Sallisaw) Chamber (of Commerce) also, I always make a phone call to our restaurants after the rodeo, and ask them ‘Hey, how was business?’ — especially the ones I know are locally owned. Surprisingly, the last five years or so, it seems like just about every time I call them, they say, ‘We had a record weekend.’ So, it’s a big deal. It brings in a lot of sales tax revenue. We go out and partnership with the Rodeo of the Ozark Rounders, our drill team that’s coming back. They rent out a couple of cabins out at KOA, so they stay there for the entire weekend — some even get here Wednesday. We have rooms rented out. The amount of people it takes to put this on is pretty gigantic, so there are a lot of people who stay in town.”