The North Star Gay Rodeo Association performs at Rochester Pride

May 18—ROCHESTER — A little county attitude came to Rochester Pride on Saturday.

Among the many acts that performed throughout the day at Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial, the last show of the day was done by the North Star Gay Rodeo Association, an organization that formed in 1989 and aims to provide a welcoming environment for anyone wanting to get involved.

The group attended Rochester Pride last year but this was their first year performing, which included Edward Eggers teaching the crowd how to line dance.

It was his first time leading line dancing and was having a blast teaching Pride attendees how to do three different dances.

"There is an international gay rodeo association so we're a chapter of that," said Jorge Sanchez, the president and rodeo director of the North Star Gay Rodeo Association. "We represent Minnesota and Wisconsin, so people don't know that we represent Wisconsin too. So we just spread from word of mouth. We started off really small and then we went to these events."

The North Star Gay Rodeo Association does an assortment of activities. They host a real rodeo once a year where they donate half of the proceeds back into the community. However, their version of a rodeo is a little different from a standard one in the sense that it has a more inclusive attitude toward participants.

"The difference between what we consider like a straight rodeo or regular rodeo compared to the gay rodeo is a regular rodeo, women can only do horse events and ours women can do anything," said Sanchez. "We also have some fun camp events like we put underwear on a goat. We have wild drag where there's a person that has to dress up in drag and they have to hop on and whoever does it the fastest wins. So we do a lot of regular rodeo events and then we also have these fun events here and we also make it very family friendly because we always want people to feel welcome. I don't care who you are."

For Sanchez and the organization, it's important to make sure everyone feels welcome and included. They have worked hard to get proper safety equipment and gear for anyone who is looking to learn the necessary skills and try to make their events friendly to all ages, races, genders and more.

"Our first rodeo, we had 500 people at the rodeo and then last year, we had 1,700 people show up," said Sanchez. "I never in a million years thought we as an organization would triple in size just going to the rodeo. So my goal is, I would love to have over 2,000 people at my rodeo just for us to have fun and show people what we do."

Acceptance and support are vital, Sanchez said. Organization members and leaders know how important it is to be a safe and welcoming environment know matter how people identify.

"We want everyone to know that we're always gonna be a safe space," said Sanchez. "We want everybody to always feel welcomed, loved. No matter what your family. We're your family the minute you walk and shake our hands. Everyone at Rochester Pride that was out there dancing with us, you became our family now. We'll always want everybody to feel loved, welcomed and just the warm fuzzy feeling."

North Star Gay Rodeo Association's next rodeo takes place over July 26-28, 2024, at the Dead Broke Arena in Hugo, Minnesota.