SDSU: Steers for State keeps rodeo athletes on the road

For over 40 years, South Dakota State University’s Steers for State program has been providing scholarships to the school’s rodeo athletes. What started with a couple of SDSU alumni donating a calf or two to give back to the school is now a program that brings in about $50,000 in scholarship money each year and has raised over $795,000 in total in the last four decades.

SDSU has 17 athletic teams on campus and 17 clubs. Because the rodeo team is a club, they are responsible for coming up with their own funding. According to Coach Ron Skovly, the team is “just fine with raising our own.” Steers for State is one creative way they do so.

 SDSU alum Jim Woster has been involved with promoting Steers for State since the ’80s. Jim recalls a time when the calves would be brought onto the football field before a game to be auctioned off. Since Ron Skovly became SDSU Rodeo’s head coach in 2009, the program has continued to gain traction. Woster said, “If anybody, I’d give [Ron] credit for realizing what it could be.”

Jim remembers the many years that he, Ron, students, and coaches crisscrossed the state to pick up donated calves. These calves would then be taken to Mary and the late Myron Williams’ operation in Wall for backgrounding. Myron and Mary were both SDSU alums, and their son, Marty, competed on the SDSU Rodeo Team in the 90s. According to Woster,  the Williams’ “believed in rodeo,” and they “truly, truly kept it going.” Skovly adds, “[Myron] carried it for years,” even buying the team a few extra cattle when needed.

After that, the calves would be taken to Matt and Paula Leowe at the Opportunity Farm in Lennox for finishing before being sold. Woster “can’t say enough about Matt and Paula Leowe.” He jokes, “We had winters when it wasn’t that much fun to have even your own cattle around, let alone 20 or 30 of someone else’s.” Without these two families donating their time and resources year after year, Jim wonders if they would have had a program.

This year, Steers for State is undergoing some changes to make it more efficient for all involved. Instead of physically donating a calf, producers can now tag a cow with an SDSU Rodeo tag and sell her calf right from the sale barn. The sale barn has the option to sell the animal separately and help promote Steers for State, or they can just take the average of what they sold and cut the check to the SDSU Foundation for the Rodeo Team. The team’s goal is to bring in 20 calves by next fall, and they are almost halfway there, with team member Hannah Schochenmaier from Pierre even donating one of her own. For the first time, all species of livestock will be accepted. Cull cows and hogs and sheep– oh my! Whatever livestock a producer is willing to donate, the team will gladly accept. Skovly hopes this will make it easier for all producers looking to donate and allow for them to ramp up the scholarship program. Woster is enthusiastic about the changes to the program.

The SDSU Rodeo Team will be traveling with 49 members this spring. Up until two years ago, they sent a member to the short go at the College National Finals for over 30 years in a row, which speaks to the caliber of the school’s rodeo program.  But these contestants aren’t just athletes– they’re scholars with diverse interests and skills. Skovly said, “We’ve got anything from pre-med, nursing, engineering, and agronomy, to construction management… for all the colleges on campus, we’ve probably got a team member in each one of them.” Skovly said many of these kids are working at least one job to fund their academic and rodeo endeavors. That kind of dedication in and out of the rodeo arena is worth supporting.

Coach Skovly has the difficult job of deciding who receives a scholarship each year, which has been heavily dependent on points due to the strict budget. Skovly believes that Steers for State will gain traction and people will see the kids they are helping, which will allow him to expand his criteria and award students who are successful in the classroom, always at practice, and willing to help out. For the first time, he is hopeful to “not have to worry about, ‘boy, we don’t have enough to go around.'” He is also eager to be able to offer more scholarships to keep South Dakota rodeo kids in the state and entice other region contestants to come to SDSU. Right now, the team has members from California to Michigan, Wisconsin to Iowa, beyond and between.

Woster recognizes how important these changes will be to Steers for State as well. With more scholarship money to go around, he reminds athletes, “You don’t necessarily have to be the top 3 steer wrestlers. It’s the kind of kid you are, too.” He adds, “Not everybody goes to the national finals, but boy, they all play a role as far as morale.”

Skovly is grateful for the support they have received over the last 40 years and is excited to see what the future holds for Steers for State and the SDSU Rodeo Team. He said, “Teams of any size, shape, or form are only as good as the village they have around them. It takes a village to make a team successful, and luckily, we have alumni since 1952. Everybody kind of rallies around us.”

Anyone who wants to support the team with a donation to Steers for State should contact Haven Stuck at haven.stuck@gmail.com, Heidi Hopewell at heidi.hopewell@sdstatefoundation.org, or Coach Skovly at ronald.skovly@sdstate.edu.