The Block & Bridle Club at Pratt Community College enjoyed another great year in 2003-2004.  Block & Bridle is not the largest student organization on campus, but is recognized as one of the leading clubs on campus.

Pratt Community College hosts an intercollegiate rodeo in October every year at our on-campus arena.  During Rodeo Week, there are a variety of activities for students and the community to celebrate rodeo and our Western heritage.  To support Rodeo Week, the club holds its annual Ag Olympics on Monday evening.  The Olympics is a team event, where team members complete a timed events course.  Included in the course are moving a four-bale stack of hay and restacking it; strapping on dryland skis and moving as a group a specified distance (the skis are 2x8s with leather straps to secure the team’s feet); rolling a tractor tire, a watermelon, a tennis ball, and a team member in a relay, roping a roping dummy; and running a barrel race with a blindfolded team member pushing another member in a wheelbarrow.  The top teams were all close, completing all events in just over one minute.  We had 9 teams enter this year.  The entry fee for each team was of four cans of food or $4.  Cash entry fees purchased additional canned food.  All of the food was donated to the Pratt County Food Bank.

During the rodeo, the Block & Bridle Club held its annual Rodeo Breakfast.  We served more than 250 servings of biscuits and gravy at this year’s breakfast, along with orange juice, soft drinks, and doughnuts.  The club puts together this breakfast each year as a service to the contestants and spectators during the Saturday morning slack performance of the rodeo.

Also in October, the club hosted a team-roping event as a fundraiser.  The club made over $500. 

A new fundraiser this year was a hog raffle.  Club members sold tickets for $5 each or 5 tickets for $20.  The two first prizes each got half a hog.  We worked with a meat company in the area to slaughter a hog and process it for the winners.  We netted approximately $800.

In February, ten members and our advisor drove to San Antonio, Texas, for the National Block & Bridle Convention.  We arrived a day early so we could see more of the sights.  We enjoyed tour of the historic Shiner Brewery and the Alamo as well as the convention tours and sessions.  Our chapter registered early so that we could all tour the historic King Ranch.  Another highlight of the convention was chapter member Matthew Vaupel being named as the winner of the National Block & Bridle Sophomore Scholarship.

This spring, our community service project involved going to a local elementary school to teach second graders the importance of soils to everyone.  We showed different soil profiles from the area so that the children could distinguish the layers and types of soil.  Each student “built” a soil model using Butterfinger BB’s as parent material, vanilla pudding as the subsoil, crushed Oreos for the topsoil, and gummy worms for the earthworms that indicate a healthy soil.  As the students learned the different layers they were able to point them out in their “dirt.”  This was the third year for this project and it continues to be a hit with the students, teachers, and the club members.

On April 20, the club held a hamburger fry at the home of Club President Elly Blasi in rural Pratt to celebrate the accomplishments of the year.  The meeting concluded with the election of club officers for next year.