Rotary Club of Casper WY

Meeting Summary

06/12/2017

President Jim Ruble called the meeting to order promptly at 12:29, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting. 

Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test: 

Brad Bodoh

Greeters: 

Carrie Gomez and Jason DeWitt were the greeters today, and Carrie introduced the members who brought guests:

· Visiting Rotarian Tim Stubson (Five Trails);

· John Griffith introduced his two guests, Kris Galles (Caldwell Banker) and Bill Thompson (Jonah Bank);

· Tom Lockhart introduced Errol Miller;

· Mark Owens introduced Caroline Carver;

· Jim Porter introduced Kim Walker;

· Charles Schoenwolf introduced Sarah Szewczyk;

Song:

Gary Pehrson had us all stand and lead us in singing “My Country Tis of Thee” 

Membership:

We had a new member inducted into the club today, Phillip Rael, sponsored by Charles Schoenwolf, welcome to the club!

We had a Paul Harris fellow awarded today, Governor Mike Sullivan (PH +5). Thank you and congratulations.

We honored, Dennis Sun, Nicole Tholson, and Lisa Scroggins today for graduating from RLI, Congratulations!

Family of Rotary:

Lynn Lockhart bragged about Tom and his guest Errol who both ran in the Boulder Boulder and received a standing ovation when they entered the arena.

Lisa Scroggins announced that her son will be coming home from Iraq after working over there for Lockheed Martin, he will be home next week. She also told us that her daughter received an award for commitment to community and character.

Grant Stumbough announced that Dennis Sun was re-elected as President of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. 

Rotarians of the Week:

Deb Theriault nominated Bill Schilling for the picnic he put on for the Wyoming Conservation Corp Workers.

Announcements:

President Jim Ruble announced that Peaches and Lisa are in the back with Duck Derby Tickets so please stop back and grab your envelope of tickets to sell. He also let us know that Monday June 26th will be the day that our exchange student Claudia will be flying out so we would like to have some Rotarians at the airport to send her off before Club meeting around 10:15-11:00.

Liz Becher recognized more of the people involved in District Conference; she started with the members of our club who were the winners of the Golf Tournament that started the District Conference, Jim Porter and Tony Valdez were both on the winning team.

Liz also thanked the following club members for being host families for the Thursday night home dinners; Ann Ruble for Co-Chairing the event, Mark and Janet Owens, Bill Schilling, Maribeth Plocek, Kevin and Julie Murphy, Brad and Jan Cundy, Bill and Chrisa DeGraeve, and Richard and Michelle Schwahn. She stated that the other clubs in Casper would like to make this a quarterly activity between the clubs so that we can get to know the other Rotarians better and enjoy some fellowship. 

Carrie Gomez reminded us of the upcoming Golf tournament fundraiser on the 29th, and she let us know that they currently have 19 teams signed up and there is still time to put together a team and be a sponsor.

Brian Deurloo announced that Duck Derby is coming soon, tickets are here so let’s get to selling. August 19th is the Derby, the Saturday before the eclipse and there will be a chance to win a million dollars. They still are in need of prizes so please donate if you can. He then told us the list of sponsors for this year; Black Hills Bentonite, GW Mechanical, The McMurry Foundation, Hilltop National Bank, Casper In Home Care, Energy Property Holdings, Newcomer Funeral Home and Crematory, Farnham’s Furniture and Community Health Centers of Wyoming. He also let us know that we will soon know what our new large service project will be sometime soon.

Program (Cowboy Tough):

PE Richard Schwahn introduced our speaker today, Susan Stubson, who is here to speak to us about Cowboy Tough and the 2017 Adventure Racing World Championship. She said that the Cowboy Tough came to pass because of a conversation she had with Governor Matt Mead after she just spent the weekend at the Boulder Boulder. She felt that Wyoming needed something of this caliber and Governor Mead agreed so he put her to work to create something as one of his priorities was to expand the recreational activities in Wyoming. So she went to work creating the Cowboy Tough race. The people that participate in this type of activity have an average income of close to $250,000 and they spend a lot of that on participating in these activities. She put together a team of people to help her create the Cowboy Tough competition. They spent a lot of time brainstorming to create something that will be big enough to be world renowned, very high profile that would highlight the whole state, have a different route through the state each year and have a historical component of things that are unique to Wyoming and to end in Casper every year. They also didn’t want it to look like just Teton County, they wanted to show the rest of the state. They also didn’t want it to be like the Tough Mudder and other types of strange competitions. They wanted it to be a unique to Wyoming competition. So they also talked with many of the people in Wyoming that have successful races and such in Wyoming like Marathons, bike rides etc. to pick their brains. They then partnered with a sporting production company, Adventure Enablers, who know how to put on these type of big productions. They also partnered with The City of Casper, who has been very supportive especially with John Patterson who understood how this could help the City. The first race was in 2012 and it has been billed as the toughest endurance race on the planet. There are teams of four people who call themselves endurance athletes and they come from all over the world. They are self-sustaining, they carry with them what they need, are given a map and sent on their way to bike, run, kayak, etc. to get from point A to point B. They have checkpoints along the way with little challenges at each checkpoint. Every year they encompass an historical element in the race, one of the challenges was to drink a shot of Wyoming Whiskey, and another challenge was to push or pull a handcart out at Martin’s Cove like the pioneers did, for 30 miles. Each year they track the money that is spent by the participants and spectators, where they spend and how much they spend during the week they are in our State. They spend almost a million dollars each year which is a big boost for our economy. About 2-3 years ago they were approached by the Federation of Adventure Racers which has a Championship race every year all around the world and they wanted to see if the Cowboy Tough could become a qualifying event for the AR Championships. They have never had one in the U.S. and decided that Wyoming would be the best place to have the first one. So they have been preparing for this and proving to the AR that they can make it very brutal to qualify to be a qualifying event so this year will be the AR championship qualifier race. It will start in Teton Village and end in Casper, there will be more than 50 teams from over 30 countries with over 250 athletes coming to Wyoming to participate in the Cowboy Tough AR Championship race. It will be a six day race covering over 500 miles across the State. She also told us that there has to be at least one female racer on each team. The economic impact of these races is huge and she feels that we have a lot of resources in this State that we need to take more advantage of like what they do with this Race. 

President Jim Ruble concluded the meeting at 1:22; letting us know that next week we are back at the Parkway Plaza. Our program will be Chris Smith presenting an update on Hogadon.