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Coach, rodeo team ready for new building
d Chad Cross, Fort Scott Community College rodeo coach, is hopeful the journey to a new rodeo facility will soon end.
So hopeful in fact, his rodeo team currently meets at the new rodeo facility, even though there is no heat or interior walls completed yet.
The rodeo team has put up 2-by-6-inch boards on concrete blocks to sit on, and also brought in chairs provided by the campus, to the as-yet unfinished facility.
When asked when the program would be moved to the new rodeo facility, Cross, said "Tomorrow would be good."
"It's a big deal to have our own space," Cross said. "We've never had a space of our own. There has been a lot of progression of movement on campus and that is good. It seems like we keep getting less and less space for a growing program."
The new rodeo facility, 40 feet by 75 feet, is southeast of Arnold Arena on FSCC Campus, adjacent to the pens where horses and cattle are kept for the rodeo program students. The program has about 50 students, he said.
The new building is officially called the Rodeo Office and Practice Facility and Cross already envisions its use.
"There will be three offices," Cross said. "There are two currently instructing (Cross and Assistant Rodeo Coach Callie Griffin). Our goal in the long run is to have another coach, but right now we are going to put a computer lab in there for the kids -- a study room."
In the largest room, some classes will be held with a big screen TV to watch instructional videos, he said.
Cross also has envisioned a "Wall of Fame" with memorabilia from Gary Harvey, who started the rodeo program at FSCC in the 1970s and John Luthi, the next rodeo coach following Harvey. Cross took over the program in 1997, he said.
There will be two restrooms, a small space for storage, a space for equipment and tools and a mud room.
"Which you can see we need a mud room," Cross said pointing to the mud footprints on the floor of the new facility.
One room he is especially proud of is the bucking machine room located at the back of the building.
"We have a bucking machine," he said. "We finally have a climate controlled space for it. Always before, the bucking machine has been in the northern part of the arena. That was the coldest and hottest space in there."
Jim Fewins, who has been acting as volunteer coordinator of the rodeo building project, said planning for the facility started in 2011.
Fewins is a former FSCC Board of Trustees member and was on the committee that started the project. That committee was comprised of agriculture instructors, himself, the college president, the endowment director and interested parties from the community, he said.
"The building started in the summer of 2013," Fewins said. "It sat through all last winter."
Volunteers, the rodeo crew and others, did some grunt work.
"They did the rough-in part, putting up studs, trussing and sheeting on the roof," Fewins said.
He said Pat Woods has been the main contractor.
"He volunteered his time to do this," Fewins said. "He lined up the bids for heating, electrical and roof. Bo Casper has helped a tremendous amount. Mike Rogers, Brian Bowen and Kent and Keith Aiken have helped."
Some of the work was done by FSCC maintenance crew.
"Joel Ramsey and his maintenance crew have done a lot on the inside, putting up insulation on the sidewalls," Fewins said.
Local businesses have put the roof on and worked on plumbing, electricity, concrete and heating and air-conditioning for the building.
Fewins is hoping for a March 1 completion date of the project.
"You have to have good weather to pour the slabs for the concrete for the furnace," he said.
Meanwhile, the rodeo team is making use of the space to call their own.
Estimated cost of the facility is $120,000, according to an earlier Tribune report
Cross, who has spent the last 17 years as head rodeo coach at FSCC, was recognized in June by his peers and the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association as the 2014 National Rodeo Coach of the Year.