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Feature: Many ingredients required to serve up Houston's signature HLSR

Xinhua, March 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

It takes more than a few rough-riding cowboys and chart-topping musical entertainers to create the world's biggest rodeo and livestock exhibition each year in Houston, Texas, the fourth-largest city of the United States.

When this year's Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo (HLSR) ended its three-week run on Sunday, the 300-acre NRG Park had received roughly 1.37 million visitors, who arrived in droves from Texas and beyond to see the professional rodeo, youth and commercial livestock shows, auctions, carnival, and thousands of agriculturally related exhibits and vendors.

As a major component of the HLSR, the RodeoHouston, which took place inside the covered 70,000-square-foot NRG Stadium, offered a total prize of more than 2 million U.S. dollars to the 322 cowboys and cowgirls who were invited to compete here as individuals or in teams for seven major rodeo events, including bull riding, steer wrestling, and barrel racing, among others.

The livestock show also attracted a large number of participants. According to organizers, there were 31,000 livestock and horse show entries from approximately 18,000 agricultural students from across the region.

Besides, there were around 350 shopping and dining vendors in the venue, organizers said.

The job of creating a successful event with all the trimmings went to 110 full-time staff members and 32,000 volunteers serving on 108 committees, said Joe Bruce Hancock, general manager of the HLSR since 2008. This creates 7,265 full-time equivalent local jobs, all with the same mission: to benefit youth, support education and facilitate better agricultural practices through exhibitions and presentation.

Allyson Tjoelker, who joined the HLSR in 2007 and has been the executive director of agricultural competitions and exhibits since 2013, said that facilitating an event of this scope is an enormous undertaking made possible through the combined efforts of staff and volunteers.

"Everyone involved has a sense of pride in each of their respective areas that becomes transparent as the show comes to life," she said. "So much effort is placed in organizing HLSR, including countless hours of planning and strategizing to make things better each year."

Whatever the total income of this year's HLSR, Tjoelker said that 25.8 million U.S. dollars had already been promised in the event's annual educational commitment, which has been designed to support local students through scholarships, grants, graduate assistantships and other programs.

The annual event has so far given more than 400 million U.S. dollars to benefit the youth of Texas, mostly through college scholarships since the first HLSR in 1932.

Tjoelker invited potential visitors throughout the world to Houston in March and see the event for themselves.

"HLSR has something for everyone, including the world's largest livestock show and rodeo, interactive agricultural exhibits and world-class shopping," she said. "Make Houston your destination next March and experience the greatness yourself." Endi