New details were revealed about Victory Fest during the monthly Military Affairs Council breakfast on April 27th.
David Roudybush, MWR Director at Fort Riley, said that Victory Fest will be an all day festival on August 19th.
“We’ll start off the day with some family friendly events as well as a car and bike show; but we will have some different things out there like henna tattoos, hair braiding, some carnival games,” said Roudybush. “Then we’ll sort of shift into some local bands and then we’ll get into some large name recognized entertainment that will go throughout the rest of the evening, and then we’ll cap off the celebration with a fireworks show.”
As many as 15,000 people could descend upon Fort Riley for the all day event.
“We figure we’re going to hit somewhere around the 9 [thousand mark], but if we get to 9000 [people] it will probably jump all the way up to 15,000, because that will mean that word of mouth has gotten out there and that’s the best type of advertising,” said Roudybush. “Once that [word of mouth] hits, we’ll start having a whole lot more people than we expected.”
Planning for the large event has been under a time crunch, with budget constraints and uncertainties.
“Because of the funding restrictions that we had this past year, we didn’t think we were going to be able to do [Victory Fest],” said Roudybush. “We finally got relief to do it in January, so we’ve been working extra hard in the last few months just to get the planning done; but we were able to accomplish that with some of our really good partners both in Junction City and Manhattan as well as at Kansas State University and the Country Stampede.”
In addition to the vendors and car show, there will also be food trucks and a secondary stage that will feature local musicians.
The headline performers for the event have not yet been announced, but are anticipated to be released in the near future. (Check with JC Post for updates)
Volunteers, sponsors and additional vendors are needed; for more information contact:
- Volunteers: 239-4920
- Corporate Sponsors: 239-3733
- Vendors: 239-5771
Ticket prices and options will be released with the main stage headline performers.
Check with JC Post for updates.