Back to School Rodeo converting to drive-thru event Saturday

As the old adage goes, the show — or in this case, the rodeo — must go on, and it will this Saturday as cars file onto Desert Hills Drive for the City of Yuma’s 10th annual Back to School Rodeo.

Converting to a drive-thru event this year, the Back to School Rodeo equips preschool through eighth grade students with essential supplies for the upcoming school year, from pencils, crayons and glue sticks to notebooks, folders and filler paper, all packed into a cinch-style backpack.

The event begins at 8 a.m. and will run until noon or until all 1,600 backpacks — 200 for preschool and kindergarten students and 1,400 for first- through eighth-graders — are distributed. Students will need to be inside the vehicle to receive a backpack.

To fall into the line-up, rodeo-goers should travel west on 34th Place toward Friendship Tower, following the flow of traffic to the Yuma Civic Center, located at 1440 W. Desert Hills Drive.

According to the civic center’s marketing specialist Cutter Chamberlain, the rodeo is “strictly a drivethru event” — due to COVID-19 concerns, all entrants must stay in their car at all times. No part of the event will take place inside the civic center nor feature vendor booths as past rodeos have. However, depending on space, vendor resources may be included in the backpacks.

Although many events have been postponed or canceled due to the virus, Chamberlain said city officials refused to let the Back to School Rodeo be counted among them.

“Education is super important for the city, and we need to ensure that kids who lack the ability to provide their own school supplies still have an opportunity to get the supplies they need,” he said. “A lot of these kids might be doing school from home this year, but they’ll still need those supplies.”

The event is sponsored by First Things First, Walmart, Arizona Public Service (APS), KYMA-TV, Sun Graphics, Yuma Sun, AEA Federal Credit Union and Community Partners Integrated Healthcare.