Between the Contest Runs
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Some of the JoMoPro pictures that have stuck with me most are of people picking up trash and serving food.
Some of the best riders in the world came to Joplin, and there are videos, magazine articles, and TV coverage of the incredible riding that happened. But afterward, when I finally sat down to go through the pictures, I would notice things I had been too busy to see.
Jenn directing volunteers with a clipboard in one hand and one of our kids beside her. Friends from church clearing plates and taking out the trash.
JoMoPro meant a lot of things to a lot of people. Those pictures captured a part of it that didn’t show up in the contest results.
The first contest in 2006 was mostly planned before I came on staff. Other people had secured the marketing, major sponsorships, the prize money, and the motorcycle. My job was to help turn those plans into a successful event while we were also getting Autumn ready to open.
That first JoMoPro was a 2-day event with Expert, Pro, and Best Trick competitions for each sport. Saturday was all skateboarding, and Sunday was when BMX took over the park. BMX had the strongest showing by far in both rider entries and spectator attendance. When we started planning for the next year, it made sense to concentrate on BMX.
There were already a few established BMX contests. Dew Tour was on NBC, X Games was on ESPN, and there were other smaller events around the country. For 2007, I had the freedom to make changes, which left me asking: What would make JoMoPro stand out?
I kept thinking about contests I had gone to in the 90s. They had multiple classes, so riders with a wide range of abilities could participate, and everybody shared the decks of the ramps. Some of those events felt like backyard ramp sessions with your friends, except there happened to be an emcee, judges, and prizes.
I wanted to recreate that atmosphere at JoMoPro.
The first big decision was to expand the classes to include Intermediate, Expert, and Pro. I also wanted as many riders as possible to participate, so we opened up each class to 50 entries. That’s 150 riders plus a Best Trick contest. That decision took a single-day BMX event and turned it into a full 3-day BMX experience.
That meant more work, more money, and more volunteers. But it was worth it to me. The big contests gave the less experienced riders a chance to watch the pros. I wanted to give them the opportunity to ride with the pros. A kid who talked his parents into driving across the state should get to ride with the guys he looked up to when he arrived.
The other thing we had going for us was a facility full of activities. Autumn was part of The Bridge, so when riders needed a break from the crowded ramps, they could use the climbing wall, play basketball, or sit down and play Xbox in the gaming center.
We called the basketball court the Cage because it was surrounded by a chain-link fence. On a typical weekend, there was usually a dodgeball game happening in there, and it was usually complete chaos. During JoMoPro, the pros joined in.
I loved watching that. The local kids were doing what they did every weekend, except now they were throwing dodgeballs at guys they had seen in the BMX magazines and in videos. Out on the ramps, riders of all skill levels were cheering for each other and hanging out on the decks. There was serious competition happening, but there was also time to enjoy being together.
We also set up a rider hospitality area with snacks, drinks, and catered food available during the weekend. We had a massage therapist and sports medicine staff on site. Some of the pros had experienced those kinds of perks at bigger contests, but at JoMoPro, an Intermediate rider received the same care as a Pro rider.
For most of the year, my conversations with some of those local kids sounded a lot like parenting.
Put your helmet on. Pick up your trash. Stop jumping on the furniture. Flush the toilet after you use it.
Then JoMoPro weekend would come around, and those same kids were being treated like VIPs. They would find me to tell me they had just eaten lunch with Daniel Dhers or Ryan Nyquist or whoever it happened to be. Sharing a ramp with those guys was exciting, but eating together, playing dodgeball, and hanging out with the pros was something very few kids would ever get to experience.
Of course, somebody had to make all of that happen. It took months of planning to pull off something like JoMoPro, and there were people carrying different parts of it.
We had staff who understood marketing and sponsorships and took care of that stuff. Those sponsor relationships gave me room to experiment because the major prizes were covered. I hired professional judges, the same guys who judged Dew Tour and X Games, and I was consistently asking people in the industry for advice. If somebody had a better idea, I was quick to change direction.
Hospitality had its own set of challenges. Jenn spent weeks calling restaurants and lining up daily meals for 200–250 people. That was a pretty big ask for the restaurants to sponsor, but she managed to get it arranged, and then there was the job of coordinating people to serve food, clean up, and keep the crowd moving.
Most of those volunteers came from local churches, with a large portion from the church our family attended. They served food, wiped tables, picked up trash, and spent time talking with riders. A lot of them had no idea who had just been on a magazine cover and who was a kid from down the street.
They fed and cared for them all the same.
Looking through those pictures afterward, I would see my friends from church caring for my friends from BMX. Two worlds that mattered to me were coming together.
Jenn was in the middle of it, keeping track of volunteers and our kids. In 2008, she was pregnant too. I had a contest to run, but she had a big job of her own. By the end of the weekend, we were all exhausted.
There was too much happening, and too many people contributing, for me to think of it as my event. Mostly I wanted the riders to feel like it belonged to them.
After JoMoPro 2008, Fat Tony from RideBMX wrote:
“What separates JoMoPro from other contests is that it has the laidback feel and hospitality of a hometown jam but the tricks, progression, and the prize money of a world class event. It’s amazing to see a local event turn into something so big that all the international pros show up.”
He had put words to what we were trying to create.
As the event continued to grow, more coverage followed. RideBMX covered it in print and online, BMX Plus ran multi-page articles, and FuelTV made a television feature. People far beyond Joplin were seeing what was happening at Autumn.
The desire to share the Good News of Jesus was behind all of that care. We wanted riders to feel welcome, and sometimes they would ask why we were putting so much into the weekend. That gave us opportunities to talk about our faith. On Sunday morning, we also offered breakfast and a church service for riders who wanted to join us.
Some of the relationships that started at JoMoPro continued away from Joplin. When we went to Interbike to meet people and find sponsors, we spent a lot of time catching up with riders who had been to Autumn. I saw familiar faces when I was invited to be part of a Dew Tour event and when we attended the NORA Cup awards. We could pick up conversations that had started back in Joplin months earlier.
One Sunday evening after JoMoPro, the contest was over, the placings had been announced, and the checks and prizes had been handed out. Everyone had left. Jenn, the boys, and I were the last ones to leave Autumn.
I shut off the lights and locked the doors. There was still a mess to clean up, but we were exhausted and it could wait for another day.
We headed to a restaurant right there by The Bridge. As the hostess walked us to our table, we passed some of the judges, guys from the magazines and other media outlets, and several of the best BMX riders in the world sitting together.
When they saw us, they stood up and clapped.
They thanked us for the work that had gone into the weekend. After everything our staff and volunteers had done, all the work Jenn had put in, and all the support local businesses had contributed, that response made it all worthwhile.
Over the previous few days, I had conversations with some of those guys about more than BMX. They had shared real struggles, and I had opportunities to tell them about the hope I have in Jesus. Those conversations happened between contest runs, while we were hanging out and getting to know each other.
I don’t know what impact those conversations had long term. But walking past that table with Jenn and the boys, I knew those guys felt cared for. And they knew why we cared.
Jeremiah Anderson
Rooted Action Park Founder
If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone else who might enjoy following along. I have a lot more stories from these years that I’d like to tell, so leave a comment and let me know if you want me to keep writing them.
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