There will be no North Washington Rodeo this year. Rodeo officials canceled the August competition, noting there are too many questions about the coronavirus pandemic.

Facing “way too many questions and no good answers” about the coronavirus, North Washington Rodeo officials decided to cancel this summer's competition.

For 60 years, the rodeo brought bareback horse riding, bull riding, calf roping and steer rustling every August, said Dave Hazlet, chairman of the rodeo committee. And for the first time in its history, the event is being canceled.

The event provided entertainment for the whole community, Hazlet said, between watching cowboys gripping and hanging on to bucking animals, and children checking out animals, looking at the display of tractors and playing under the bleachers.

This event was planned for Aug. 18 to 22.

“We really hated to do it. There was a lot of things we wanted to make happen but the uncertainty was too great,” Hazlet said.

Aside from providing entertainment, the rodeo serves as a fundraiser for the North Washington Volunteer Fire Department. As president of the fire department, Hazlet worried that even if virus precautions taken by the government ease up by summer, people would still be hesitant to come into close contact with others.

Since funding for the event comes out of the fire department's budget, Hazlet worried the department would be unable to recoup its losses.

“Is it going to get loosened up so that we're allowed to have a crowd? Restarting the country slowly is the right thing to do and by August we might be OK, but are people going to come? With so many people out of work are they going to have money to spend on this?” Hazlet said.

“There's a lot of money that goes into this thing and it's a pretty quick jump on or jump off. If we went with it and it didn't go well I'm not sure we would survive that. It could have been very devastating for the fire department,” he said.

Hazlet said that even though the rodeo and other events canceled this year are major sources of fundraising for the fire department, “the fire department is stable and we'll get by. We're in good shape.”

The cancelation of the rodeo wasn't the virus's first impact on the community.

Bill Slater, a staple of the North Washington Rodeo who judged local and high school competitions, was the first confirmed person in Butler County to have died of the virus in March. Slater also traveled all over the Eastern United States as a judge for the International Rodeo Association and the American Rodeo Association.

Hazlet said the decision to cancel this year's event was also out of a concern for public safety.

“We're a fire department and our best bet is to protect the public and cancel this thing,” Hazlet said. “And that's a big reason we canceled it. We don't know enough about the virus to make a call so that's what we did.”

Hazlet said the committee will soon start planning for next year's event, promising to bring back the cowboy tradition.

“Support your local fire department and we'll see you at a bigger, better rodeo in 2021,” Hazlet said.