This year’s Country Stampede has come to a close and though Mother Nature made an appearance on Thursday, the rest of the weekend presented concert goers and those working the event with a pretty decent forecast.
Sheriff Greg Riat, with the Pottawatomie County Sheriff’s Department, and Larry Couchman, Riley County EMS Director, both credited the weather with their low numbers.
Riat stated the weather helped to keep the crowd happy and Couchman reported the low numbers of heat related incidents.
Though, both agencies saw a good weekend, each had tales of things that could have gone better.
“Internally we had some challenges with our radio system the first couple of days,” said Riat. “It kind of gave us a headache, but we were able to get that fixed with a little bit taller tower up at the sheriff’s office.”
For Couchman, he really only mentioned two major problems; one dealing with a drinking game that went wrong and someone who overdosed on illegal drugs who had to be taken from the grounds.
For the acts, the only day that caused a delay was the sudden storm Thursday, but the rest of the days ran smooth.
Sunday morning had an opportunity for a private concert here in Manhattan of the opening act of Sunday’s line up, Morgan Frazier.
Frazier put on a free concert at the Verizon store at 10:30 am and played to an intimate crowd before making her way back the stampede grounds for her show.
With this year done, plans for next year are already in the works as Wayne Rouse, President of Country Stampede, made the announcement Eric Church will be the headlining act next year.
Rouse added later on this year another big announcement will be made.
“We’ll make another announcement the first part of November,” said Rouse. “I think it will blow everybody away. It’s going to be a great year next year.”
Not only are the plans for 2014 being finalized, but the 20th anniversary of the event will be happening in 2015 and there are plans for some even more exciting things to come.
