Fair board agrees on major changes for fair

WORLAND – The Washakie County Fair Board introduced their newest member at their regularly scheduled meeting on Monday night, Feb. 10.

The new member is Shane Wiggins, a recently retired community member who loves rodeos and judging. Wiggins recently moved back to Worland with his wife in July, but had previously lived here for more than a dozen years after moving around the region.

After one meeting without a full board, Wiggins will join Jeff Lapp who was voted as president, Marty Cross as vice president, Tamera Drake as treasurer, and Beth Shaffer as secretary, with Wiggins serving as the at-large board member.

CHANGES COMING

The fair board determined after a lengthy discussion to adopt the state market standards that the Wyoming State Fair will be implementing this year. The State Fair just recently adopted the new standards

This change will add a wide range of categories to judge individual breeds of beef, sheep and pigs. The change came as a sudden shock initially at last month’s meeting, and the board had originally intended to remain with the same system they had implemented in recent years.

However, after deliberation and added pressure from the public, the board decided to implement the state’s changes in order to allow Washakie County competitors to perform in the same categories as state. However, with individual winners coming in a large variety of categories, the fair board has the intent to award an overall champion, with more details on the exact process to come in the fair book.

The fair board would encourage any fair participant who is purchasing an animal for the fair around this time, to find out the breed of the animal from the seller to help the fair when the time comes to determine what class it will compete in.

The board also intends to spend time with superintendents to help examine animals and help determine breeds easier at the time of competition.

PREPARING FOR FAIR

The board discussed a large variety of entertainment and what nights they would take place on for the fair from July 25-Aug. 1.

The board has determined they will be reducing musical entertainment down to three nights from six nights last year. Musical entertainment will be Thursday through Saturday night, and beginning the entertainment at 7 p.m. as opposed to later.

The board has looked into different forms of entertainment such as a monster truck show, jousting show, as well as other events such as a craft fair and the cornhole tournament making a return for the second year in a row.

The board is going to be seeking bids for the kids rodeo as well as the regular rodeo, and anticipate starting a competition for the fair book cover and motto to prepare for the fair sooner than last year.

The board did acknowledge they are ahead of where they were last year, but are attempting to finish the fair book months ahead of when they finished last year.

The next fair board meeting will be Monday, March 9 at the Washakie County Fairgrounds.