This Saturday, the McCook swim team will host teams from four area towns during a swim meet at the YMCA, which means hundreds of visitors to our community for the day.
Over the weekend, several hundred additional visitors will descend upon McCook for the 24 ½ annual Buffalo Commons Storytelling and Music Festival.
Last weekend, golfers were everywhere during Community Hospital’s annual John Mullen Pro Am golf tournament. And more than three dozen two-person high school fishing teams competed at Red Willow Lake, bringing with them supporters and the actual owners of their boats, their parents.
From baseball games to camping and boating, equine events to arts happenings, there are many opportunities around the area for people to visit - or even consider moving - to our communities.
Because of our smaller sized towns, these events tend to have a bigger impact, both financially and psychologically. There is a certain sense of pride when you see all these out-of-town plates on Main Street, getting to experience what we get to experience every day.
Next month, McCook will host two major swim meets as part of the Plains Tsunami Swim League, which includes more than three dozen teams from three states.
On July 10, McCook will be hoping with shoppers during Crazy Days, while the swimming pool will be filled with hundreds of swimmers as part of a qualifying swim meet.
And then on July 17, anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 swimmers and their families and fans will descend upon the McCook City Pool for a day of competitive swimming.
For years, this final meet was hosted in Lexington, where they have a tremendous aquatic center with an 8-lane competition pool as well as a separate pool with water-slides and a zero-entry area. (But I’m not here to compare pools today; trust me, that will be a later column.)
Fortunately, McCook does have an 8-lane pool, the minimum needed to host such a large swim meet. We also have the hotels, the restaurants and the retail to support an event like this.
Organizers from the league were in McCook recently to prepare for the July 17 meet and their comments struck home. Organizers said the league felt welcomed in McCook, that it felt wanted, that it felt appreciated for being here. Whereas other communities might see the meet as a burden, we have an opportunity to embrace these types of events and make a significant impression on the community.
We can’t let these types of opportunities pass us by, from the dollars they bring to town to just exposing people to everything our community has to offer.
And while I am focusing on events and activities around our area, the same holds true for businesses.
If Mac’s Drive-In opened in Omaha, would anyone really notice? It would be among the dozens of restaurants in a one-mile radius. Yet, we all lamented when they had to cut back their hours, forcing us to have our home-made onion rings for lunch rather than dinner. Could you imagine the uproar if Mac’s shut its doors?
That being said, if we want these businesses to exist in McCook for the times when visitors are here, we need to frequent them with our dollars when visitors aren’t here. If we want these events to happen, community members need to step up, get involved and volunteer to make it happen. And perhaps most importantly, if we want these activities to take place in McCook, we need to have the infrastructure to host larger events to draw people to our area, whether it is a large ball complex, a new welcoming aquatic center or an updated convention center.
We have many opportunities to make things happen which can have a tremendous impact on our communities. All these events and activities, as well as thriving businesses, add up to make sure that our communities will be around for generations to come.
If we all work together to make these events and businesses successful, we can truly make an impact and we can make our communities an even better place to call home.
Two projects for McCook youth highlight the community's history as well as choices that affect their future.
Communities needs jobs and houses but we also need places that young people and families want to live and community leaders are doing one project at a time, especially to get recent graduates to move back home.
Checking on Our Success Is Now Urgent As the Chief Financial Officer for Community Hospital in McCook, I tell people that I have three major worries. The first concern is demographics. As we model out our population changes in Red Willow County between the 202 census and where we expect to be for the 2030 census, we know that if we continue on our historical trends that we would end this decade with a decrease of about 520 people or about five percent fewer residents. This drop is compounded by two other factors: an aging community, resulting in 15 percent fewer working-age population members (20-64 year olds) or about 875 fewer people; and a 24 percent increase of the Medicare-aged population in the country or about 515 more people in that category. From the healthcare perspective, this creates both financial challenges and operational challenges. On the fiscal side, Medicare payments do not cover the full cost of providing care compared to traditional insurance. For day-to-day operations, we will have a smaller workforce to draw upon to take care of more elderly community members. So Community Hospital made it part of its mission to make the community a better place to live, work and play as we need a vibrant community in order to attract the workforce needed to provide the care our community needs. We have thrown our support behind the community amenity improvement projects, including McCook’s new outdoor aquatic center and the city’s ball fields, the McCook YMCA renovation and expansion campaign, the inclusive playground at Kelley Park and many more projects. We have invested in housing, from participating in the McCook Economic Development Corp.’s North Point project to downtown student housing, which serves two purposes: engaging the medical young professionals more fully into McCook’s activities and businesses as well as freeing up some housing currently used by the hospital to house these students. These are not just frivolous projects that are nice to have. All of these projects and more are needed if we want to maintain a level of economic sustainability over the next decade and for the next generations. Families need them. Young people need them. All ages need them. And this movement in our community cannot be pushed down the road any longer. On March 13, the U.S. Census Bureau released their 2024 population estimates by county. Unfortunately, as we near the half way point of the decade, we are not moving in the right direction. The internal forecast we prepared for long-range planning at the hospital showed that the population of Red Willow County would have decreased by 230 people by 2024 to a total of 10,495. The census data, which counts between the regular census every decade, relies on birth and death certificates, as well as other federal data basis such as Social Security, IRS and postal records. Currently, the estimate is for Red Willow County is at 10,409, nearly 100 fewer people than we had projected. And we are not alone in this fight for people. Hitchcock County to our west is down 155 people to 2,460, while Furnas County to our east is down 170 people to 4,468. This results in our three-county area losing a total population of 618 over the past four years. The improvements we have been making have not yet had time to leave their mark. The new city pool is open with the remodeled YMCA, ballparks and playgrounds scheduled for completion over the next few years so we will see their impact down the road. But I am optimistic that these amenities and projects will have a meaningful impact on our ability to attract and retain people over time, both for the hospital and for the community. We will continue to watch the official counts for signs of progress, working to stop the out-migration and hopefully see a shift to an increase in population. Ultimately, it will take everyone’s effort and input - from local businesses to individuals - to make the community grow and thrive and to say that we have found success. *** Sean Wolfe is the CFO for Community Hospital and the treasurer for McCook Community Foundation Fund, along with numerous other volunteer roles in the community and has a passion for making his hometown an even better place to call home.
Jeremy Shaw named April 2025 McCook Volunteer of the Month
While the Bison Alumni Newsletter will still be available digitally, a new printed service is available.
During a recent performance at the Fox Theater by the Lied's Arts Across Nebraska, there was one group who was not thanked: those who showed up for the event, which is a big deal.
Mark Friehe named March McCook Volunteer of the Month.
Although the Bodensteiners no longer live in Southwest Nebraska, they are still connected and wanted to see if prosper and thrive.
From long-term projects to weekly events, you cannot say "there is nothing to do" or "nothing is happening."
With the goal of reaching 200 subscriptions, the Bison Alumni Newsletter is launching a subscription service.
