A&W took top honors in this year’s Sportsman’s Holiday Parade with a chuckwagon.
“A&W, I was really happy, I’m glad they got the grand sweepstakes,” Ozzie Shaw, longtime parade master, said. Shaw had a little different this year as parade organizers worked on breaking Steve Hanscam in as parade master. “Hopefully, this will be my last one.”
Judging with Shaw were Dr. Dave Larsen, Sweet Home Forest Service District Ranger Mike Rassbach and Juan Ulep. Larry Blem and Hanscam handled the parade.
“It was pretty short,” Shaw said of the parade. It had about 50 entries. Usually, there are 25 to 30 more. “There wasn’t the participation this year. I was really surprised there was more in there.”
The parade had fewer horse entries this year, and it needs more music. The only music in the parade this year were the blue-ribbon Squarenaders.
“It was fairly nice,” Shaw said. “I think if we have a lot of people in the parade the route we have is going to be too short.”
The parade wound through crowds of spectators lined up along Long Street and Main Street from 18th Avenue to 10th Avenue. The front of the parade reached 22nd Avenue before the end passed 18th Avenue.
Highlights among the floats included the junior high OSSOM group with an anti-tobacco float.
“They had a nice float,” Shaw said. “They had a beautiful float. Of course, A&W had theirs. The Brownie Troop (183) had a nice float. Of course the Squarenaders, and of course, the state parks float was very good. There were several nice floats. There were several others that had real good floats out there and really did a lot of work, which was nice.”
Following Saturday morning’s parade, Sportsman’s Holiday participants enjoyed a kids’ carnival in Mollie’s parking lot along with the stick horse rodeo, drawing several hundred children. Others traveled to the outdoor events center on Long Street to take in the Loggers Olympics and Relays.
That three-hour event overlapped with a free draft horse pull at the events center just prior to the rodeo. The draft horse pull drew an estimated 250 spectators and was free this year. East Linn Christian Academy provided barbecue chicken lunch in the Safeway parking lot, and fireworks were on display over Foster Lake that night.
Sportsman’s Holiday events kicked off Friday night with the first installment of the Calapooia Roundup and Rodeo.
Friday and Saturday, the rodeo itself drew a little more than an estimated 1,050 spectators in addition to Sunday’s attendance, which was unavailable at press time.
“Overall, it looked really good,” Rodeo Committee Secretary Jennifer Bruijn said. “Everyone was really pleased. We had a lot of positive feedback. Attendance was down just a minute hair from last year.”
Rodeo workers attribute that to a change in Philomath’s time, she said. Cottage Grove, Philomath and Sweet Home hold their rodeo’s the same week each year, usually at different times. The three rodeos talk to each other to plan the events, but Philomath moved its time from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. this year, and that may have had an impact on Sweet Home attendance.
The vendors were happy, Bruijn said, and the Loggers Olympics were “awesome” their first year at the events center. The draft horse pull was in its second year but free for the first time.
The Rodeo Committee will probably keep admission to that event free and add even more activities at the events center for next year, Bruijn said. Friday and Saturday night, Sweet Home’s New South provided music for a dance.
“A lot of people stayed Friday night,” Bruijn said. The dance had between 75 and 100 persons hang around, sitting on picnic tables talking or dancing as late as 1:30 a.m. “It was a lot of fun.”