Grays Harbor Mounted Posse Indoor Rodeo draws record crowds
Published 1:30 am Monday, March 23, 2026
This past weekend, the Mike Murphy Pavilion and Centerville Western Stores Indoor Arena at the Grays Harbor County Fairgrounds hosted sold out events for all three days of the Grays Harbor Mounted Posse Indoor Rodeo.
Professional and local amateur contestants filled out the events for the capacity crowds over the weekend with Kids Day festivities featured Sunday.
“We’ve sold out Saturday nights before, but never all three days,” said Rodeo Secretary Kevin Wagner. “Everything just came together great.”
Professional rodeo contestants from Idaho, Montana, Utah, Oregon and all over Washington state participated in the three-day event. This sanctioned indoor rodeo serves as the kickoff to the Northwest Professional Rodeo Association season and many use this as a chance to try new horses in training or rodeo gear for the upcoming outdoor season, and several of last year’s rodeo champions competed over the weekend.
Sunday’s sold out crowd was a first for the Grays Harbor Mounted Posse and proved they were moving in the right direction emphasizing its rodeo as a family event. Grays Harbor Posse Captain Pat Carl noted they “we opened at 10 a.m. for Kids Day with face painting, a big bouncy house and a balloon station and the kids had a blast.”
On Sunday the rodeo sold 1,632 tickets at the door, by far an all-time record.
Perhaps the biggest event on the docket for Sunday was the kids’ stick horse race. Four age divisions of 3 and under, 4 to 5, 6 to 7 and 8 to 10 years of age raced through the dirt from one end of the arena to the other with their stick horses. Winners of each division received awards and over 200 children participated in the crowd pleasing contest.
Elma Farm and Feed was the primary sponsor supplying stick horses to ensure each child had their own stick horse with which to run.
“It’s just amazing,” said Wagner. “Our sponsors have just been amazing. It makes this whole thing work so at the end we can give back to our community.”
After last year’s rodeo Wagner set a goal to increase sponsors to help with the rising costs of running the rodeo as a non-profit organization and the community answered.
“I put the word out and in a short time we had 23 new sponsors to add to our already awesome partners and it really helped us get over the top,” Wagner said, adding she also wanted to reiterate how every donation or sponsorship essentially finds its way back into our communities.
Sunday’s rodeo theme was cowboys and cowgirls are “tough enough to wear pink” and pink was everywhere from rodeo staff shirts to riders or on the horses. The Grays Harbor Mounted Posse uses the color pink to bring attention to breast cancer awareness and is contemplating adding other colors or ribbons to next year’s rodeo for more recognition.
All proceeds from the non-profit rodeo make their way back into the Grays Harbor community by supporting food banks, the backpack program, college scholarships and families in need, just to name a few posse priorities.
With record attendance comes more work for the multitude of volunteers and fair staff, and to Wagner, “Working with the fair staff was amazing, they’re always there to help us out and it’s been a great relationship. Our members and sponsors make this happen for our community and I’m so thankful.”
