Gooding Pro Rodeo teams with JAE Foundation on mental health

GOODING, Idaho – The Gooding Pro Rodeo has always been about giving back.

Whether it was to the community as part of the county’s annual celebration – this year marks the 100th Gooding County Fair and Rodeo – or to the contestants who battle throughout the year for rodeo’s gold, beneficiaries are always on the mind. It’s why the event is considered one of the top ProRodeos in the country.

That mentality is amped up a bit for this year’s Gooding Pro Rodeo presented by Idaho Ford Dealers, set for Thursday, Aug. 14-Saturday, Aug. 16, with a special “Beauty and the Beast” performance set for Wednesday, Aug. 13. All performances take place at 8 p.m. at Andy James Arena. Volunteers will be “passing the boot” in the stands during the Thursday performance to help raise funds and awareness for Twin Falls, Idaho-based JAE Foundation.

“The more we learned about the foundation, the more it felt like a great fit for our rodeo,” said Jamie Lancaster, one of the organizers of the fair and rodeo. “The JAE Foundation is 100 percent committed to mental-health awareness and suicide prevention through their outreach program.”

While the boot-passing will happen Thursday, there will be ways to contribute during the other nights of the rodeo and beyond. The foundation has a retail store in Twin Falls and has donation opportunities on its website. While monetary contributions are great, just spreading the word is a valuable resource, too.

“I think our first connection to the Gooding Pro Rodeo was with one of our top initiatives at the foundation, which is our high school senior initiative,” said Malan Erke, the organization’s community outreach director who is originally from Gooding. “We brought through about 4,000 high school seniors and shared our experience with them, and the Gooding community really took it seriously.

“They built their own ambassador program, and it really just started to ripple.”

The JAE Foundation is riding that wave and hoping to increase ways it reaches others.

“In general, the conversation needs to be started, and a big part of the mental-health struggle that people have is heavily related to that cowboy mentality,” Erke said. “Clearly the rodeo community doesn’t hat the cowboy mentality, and neither does the foundation. There’s that one piece where we encourage people to be really tough, which gets masked with the idea that you can’t talk about the hard stuff.

“That’s not what it’s about. You can be super tough and still talk about your feelings and your struggles that you’re going through. The reality is the way the world is right now, we need people talking. We need to start talking about this hard stuff and working on that. If any rodeo is going to pave the way and open the door for mental health, it’s going to be the Gooding Pro Rodeo for sure.”

The community’s marquee event – which will feature hundreds of contestants battling over four days in the Magic Valley – has been on the leading edge of vibrant experiences. From having multiple livestock producers to having two of the top bullfighters in the game to introducing a second emcee with Garrett Yerigan joining Steve Kenyon in the announcers’ stand, the Gooding Pro Rodeo has created an atmosphere that everybody talks about.

With nightly audiences that are as entertaining as the action, it’s the perfect setting for a festival of this nature, which is why teaming with the foundation is important.

“Mental health and suicide are serious issues in rural Idaho and in the rodeo world,” Lancaster said. “Our staff was given a chance to go through the Boot Check experience at Jae’s Place and learn about Jae Bob Bing’s story. When we left, we all agreed that this was a cause that we needed to support any way we could.”

Bing was born in South Korea in 1988 and adopted by a family that lives in Pinedale, Wyoming. His parents owned a Western store there, and their son spent his young life fishing, camping, riding horses, competing in sports and sharing his time with friends. He went virtually everywhere in cowboy boots.

When he died by suicide in 2016, many of his friends and family attended the funeral also wearing boots. One of those was Jason Vickrey, who now lives in Twin Falls and is the founder of the JAE Foundation. With each pair of boots given through Jae’s Place, Vickrey and his wife, Paige, have strengthened their promise to others who may need a supportive ear.

“We’ve got to open the door around mental health for everybody,” Erke said. “At the foundation, we’re going to go about as fast and as hard as we can to open that door, but we can’t get to every single person if that door doesn’t get opened by their people. If somebody comes through the foundation, the challenge is when they leave that we encourage them to go open the door for people in their lives.

“We have some strategies for success, and they fit a rodeo theme, too. We tell people to rope people in. You’ve got to tell your friends and family about the foundation, the conversations you’ve had and maybe the impact it’s had in your journey. Then you’ve got to get in the saddle, spend some time talking about mental health; you’ve got to take the reins. Every step we take is a step in the right direction for a conversation around mental health if we open that door.”

The communication doesn’t have to be Earth-shattering. Speaking about mental health can be as easily done as over a cup of coffee at the breakfast joint or just being a good friend to someone who needs to talk about their feelings, their emotions.

“If we just love our people a little bit harder and open that door on mental health,” Erke said, “there’s some big stuff on the other side of that.”