San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Announcers’ voices bring sense of familiarity to rodeo despite changes
The first San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo in the COVID-19 era has ushered in a slew of changes designed to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
A scaled-down version of the rodeo has moved from AT&T Center to the fabled Freeman Coliseum next door. Organizers added multiple safety measures, including checking the temperature of everyone who comes onto the grounds and installing air purification lighting in the building that kills the virus. The number of hand-sanitizing stations has nearly doubled.
But some things stay the same. Such as the booming voices of professional rodeo announcers Randy Corley, 69, and Wayne Brooks, 54, echoing across the arena.
While Brooks is relatively new to the show, Corley has been the host for more than 20 years.
And this year’s western extravaganza started as it always does with the grand entrance of the Jack Sellers Bexar County Palomino Patrol and Drill Team into the spotlight, followed by “The StarSpangled Banner.”
Corley and Brooks said they look forward to each rodeo performance, which includes specialty acts such as western shooters and trick riders. This year the rodeo runs through Feb. 27.
“With things as tough as they are, my hat is off to (Executive Director and CEO) Cody Davenport, the entire board and volunteers for pushing down pretty hard to follow the guidelines but to go on with the rodeo,” Corley said.
On Friday, three hours before the rodeo kicked off, the pair were making last-minute preparations at the announcer stand.
Their job is to guide fans through the roller-coaster highs and lows of an evening’s performance. Their delivery is seamless as they reveal contestants’ scores and statistics along with descriptions of dramatic and humorous scenes that play out on the dirt-packed arena floor. Their quick recall of facts and details is the result of meticulous homework done daily. Both have years of experience with ranching and bareback riding that shores up the wealth of knowledge they share with fans.
As technicians carried out sound checks on this day, the duo said they were thrilled to be back and working.
“We want our fans who bought a ticket to come here and have enough fun that they want to come back and do it again,” Brooks said. “We don’t have to worry about good fans in San Antonio, because we have got some of the best fans in the world right here.”
A third member of the cohort is music director Brad Narducci. With the press of a laptop key, Narducci plays an array of musical styles and cues the announcers to accentuate or emphasize moments through the night.
“It’s a team effort,” Brooks said. The announcers are good friends who share the same philosophy: It’s all about fun.
For many of the years Corley has been an announcer at the San Antonio rodeo, he worked with legendary Hadley Barrett — Corley’s father-in-law.
Barrett and Corley had helped
Brooks become a PRCA member. Barrett died in 2017, and Brooks joined Corley in the announcer’s booth a year later.
Corley and Brooks travel the national rodeo circuit as PRCA announcers.
“We’re blessed to be in an industry of entertainment,” Brooks said. “We just had the short end of the stick for the last 12 months.”
Two weeks ago, County Judge Nelson Wolff sent a letter to the San Antonio Livestock Exposition, which runs the stock show and rodeo, asking that this year’s event be suspended because of the risk of spreading the coronavirus.
But rodeo officials assured Wolff that extensive safety precautions would be taken, including having sheriff’s deputies and the county’s Office of Emergency Management enforce face mask and social distancing requirements.
Lauren Sides, spokeswoman for the rodeo, said the coliseum will be less than half full each night, with only about 3,500 to 3,600 guests for each performance.
Sides said that to adhere to social distancing protocols, a pod-seating format was used in the stadium, with a minimum of two seats between each pod. The pods are set up in groups of two, four, six and eight seats, with empty rows directly behind or in front of guests. Sides said the unused seats in the arena have been taped off. Large, photo cutouts of rodeo associates, past and present, fill some of those seats, bought by donors to benefit the rodeo scholarship fund.
“We were lucky to have our full show inside of the AT&T Center last year,” Sides said. “Inside the center we have over 16,500 seats. It’s a huge change for us to come into the Freeman, but we’re so lucky to have the building so we can have our rodeo.”
The rodeo’s return to the Freeman brought back memories for longtime volunteers and fans. Public affairs chair Wimberley David, 43, recalled sitting in Section 120 as a child with her family, recoiling from dirt that thundering horses kicked up in their faces.
She recalled seeing concerts that featured a roster of entertainers such as Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire and Destiny’s Child.
“It felt like I was back home,” David said. “It felt that familiar.”
That same homespun feeling is what Corley and Brooks offer fans, whether in the mammoth AT&T Center or the intimate Freeman Coliseum. As they headed to a last-minute meeting, they walked around roped-off rows and past mask-covered volunteers in what has become the new normal for the 2021 rodeo.
“Whether it truly does good or not, that’s not our call,” Corley said. “I believe in following the science.”