By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The Ellis County Fair is less than 30 days away.
Along with the usual–KPRA rodeo, car races, truck and tractor pulls, the Pride of Texas Carnival and a demolition derby–this year will include several new activities and events at the Ellis County Fairgrounds July 16-23.
With the theme “Heroes in the Heartland,” the featured musical attraction will be a concert Fri., July 22, by country group Little Texas.
“They have that song ‘Slow Ride Home’ that they produced when they came through Hays a few years ago for CW2 Bryan Nichols,” Fair Board President Jill Pfannenstiel told Ellis County Commissioners Monday.
As the band neared Hays on Aug, 9, 2011, American flags greeted them at every turn — they were just ahead of the funeral procession for the fallen soldier. Nichols, a ’98 graduate of Thomas More Prep Marian High School, was killed Aug. 6, 2011, while serving with the 158th Aviation Regiment in Afghanistan.
Nichols’ family will attend the Little Texas concert in his honor, Pfannenstiel said, and will meet with the band members.
Of course, the fair focuses on 4-H, whose members are busy working on their projects. One major change this year for them and open-class participants is a new system for fair entries.
“I’ve been working on it since January and we’ll be rolling it out,” Pfannenstiel said.
“Everyone pre-enters to the fair online on the computer and we’ll print entry tags. This year will be a trial year to work out all the bugs but it will be good. It’ll help us on entering the results and getting them published to the media quicker.”
Also new is the July 19 Old Timers Showmanship Contest–for those age 19 or older–which will be a fundraiser for the Ellis County 4-H Council.
“So if you know someone with some animals out there already and you want to try showing a pig, goat or beef, you can come out and show. It’s $15 to enter,” she explained, “and you can win some of the money back and the rest will go to the 4-H Council.”
One change fair attendees will surely notice is new bathrooms.
“We’re in the final phase of getting those finished–finishing plumbing and putting up the partitions,” Pfannenstiel reported. “They’re looking great. We had a business donate an air conditioning and furnace system to us as a fair sponsorship for the next few years, so that was really nice. We’ve had lots of good help, lots of good volunteers out there working on that so it will be a nice addition to the fairgrounds.”
Commissioners assured Pfannenstiel the county would again help with building the demo derby pit and the tractor pull track as it has in past years.
More information and ticket locations for the 2016 Ellis County Fair is available on the website and Facebook.