Casper Start-Up Challenge Finalist Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions wants to raise up the next generation of rodeo athletes

Heidi Foy is a cowgirl, through and through. For the past 25 years, she has worked with and for the College Nationals Final Rodeo as a volunteer, as a contestant, as contract personnel and more. She’s even served on the local CNFR committee and has worked for the national office on the CNFR openings.

In short, she’s got dirt on her boots and rodeo in her blood. And one day, Foy decided to take that love, that passion for rodeo, and turn it into something that could help others.

The result of that is Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions, which, according to her website, is “a portal built around building relationships between student-athletes and college rodeo coaches.  This is a tool to help parents, student-athletes and coaches navigate the recruiting journey.”

Think of it like Tinder for college rodeo recruitment. She matches up college rodeo athletes with the schools, coaches and events that work best for them.

“When the very first version of this idea kind of took off, I was doing interviews with college rodeo teams and college rodeo coaches during 2020, for them to get information out about their programs,” Foy stated. “Everything changed in 2020, and there were no college finals, no high school finals, no rodeos for them to go to and try to recruit from. So I just started having conversations like three times a week with different rodeo coaches and by the end of the summer and into the fall of 2020, I actually had parents reaching out to me, saying, ‘Hey, I’ve got a senior. He wants to go here. He wants to stay in this region. Who do we contact?'”

After having similar conversations with countless parents at that time, the gears started turning in Foy’s brain. She said that she had her first real “consulting call” with a family in Atlanta, Georgia, who had a student-athlete involved in barrel racing. The student was very good, but they didn’t know how to make the transition from high school to college, and, even if they did, there weren’t any colleges nearby for the student to attend.

“That was where the idea first came from,” Foy remembered. “That’s the family that really pushed me to start having more conversations. I started asking myself, ‘Is this needed? How can I provide more solutions, other than just getting the information out?’ So, after a little bit of what I lovingly call ‘analysis paralysis,’ I finally had some conversations with coaches who said, ‘Man, we could really use a searchable directory.'”

That “searchable directory” would become the foundation upon which Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions was built. Like a dating app, it was designed to match up students and colleges/coaches based on a number of different criteria.

“Coaches would say, ‘We’re looking for that last person to fill our team,’ or ‘We want to look for this type of personality, or this one person that can fit the rough stock team or the time event team,'” Foy shared. “And so, a searchable directory popped into my head, and I asked myself, ‘What would it look like if I were to create some kind of recruiting tool?'”

It took some back and forth, some talking into and, yes, some “analysis paralysis,” but eventually, Foy launched Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions in November 2023.

“I went live with a community recruiting portal, and so far I’ve gotten some good feedback,” she said. “I’ve made a lot of contacts, I’ve got some students and a handful of coaches. But it’s definitely still in the early stages.”

The fact that it’s still in its early stages makes it a perfect fit for the Casper Start-Up Challenge.

Foy is one of five finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, which, according to the Advance Casper website, exists to help “new, independent businesses in the seed, start-up, or early growth stages in Natrona County.” The top three winners of the Casper Start-Up challenge will receive seed money, in addition to marketing, networking and mentorship assistance throughout the challenge and beyond.

Foy will present her business plan for Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions during the 2024 Casper Start-Up Challenge Pitch Night, happening on Sept. 5 at Frontier Brewing Company. The Pitch Night starts at 5:30 p.m. and the public is welcome to attend and hear Foy, as well as the other finalists, pitch their start-ups to a select, diverse panel of judges.

“The money from the Casper Start-Up Challenge would be one thing,” Foy offered, “but when you look at, already, some of the training that we’ve received from the Start-Up Challenge, the mentorship, and more — it’s been great. The Start-Up Challenge has challenged me to think a little bigger. My original scope was very focused on rodeo, but for the mentorship to come in and say, ‘Well, what type of economic impact can you make? What else can we do? How can you scale this?’ it really got me thinking a little bigger, like maybe there are some other agriculture-related sports, or agricultural-related things that happen in college that also don’t have clear recruiting paths, that I might be able to provide a solution for.”

Each of the five finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge answers that question: What solution does your business provide? And, for Heidi Foy, her business aims to solve a variety of issues, or questions, that students and their parents may have.

“Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions has created a portal that’s very similar to NCAA Sports, only it’s very specific to college rodeo,” Foy stated. “So, if you’re the parent of a kiddo that participates in youth or junior high or high school rodeo, this is a great place to go to figure out what kinds of questions you should be asking your kiddo.”

Foy also said Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions is a good resource for the students themselves and for college rodeo coaches.

“For coaches, this is the place to get your college program out there, to get your rodeo program out there, to talk about what your background is, what your coaching structure is, what your philosophy is, so that those students and parents can find out where you are, and what you’re about, to decide if that’s the school for them,” Foy said.

The database itself is extremely user-friendly for students, parents and coaches. The directory is searchable, so if a student is looking for a specific academic program — whether it’s nursing, welding, business or anything else — they can search the directory by academic program. Students can also search by location if they want a college in Texas, or Tennessee or somewhere else entirely.

“Or maybe a student doesn’t even know what they’re lookin for,” Foy shared. “For those students who don’t really know what they’re looking for, we actually highlight a different college rodeo program and have a live conversation with them, right inside the portal. That gives students an opportunity to participate in a conversation and ask any questions that they might have, but I also have a series of questions that I know now [that] college freshmen should be asking. So we go through that line of questioning and then try to get as much information out about those coaches and their programs so that it’s easy for those student-athletes to find the information that matters to them.”

Additionally, Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions offers a life-skills training course, called “Outside the Arena.”

“We provide workshops on financial literacy, time management, social media training, regular media training and more,” Foy said. “We talk about balancing your checkbook, financial aid, rental contracts, how to winterize your trailer, things like that. “

Bullfrog also has a section called “Scholarship Corner,” which, as the name implies, provides information about various types of scholarships.

“There is a lot of money left on the table, year-over-year, as far as these scholarship organizations are concerned,” Foy revealed. “And so, we’ve tried to put together a pretty inclusive list of different types of scholarships. Some of them are sweepstakes that you just enter your name and maybe you get drawn to win. Some of them are essay-driven, so you have to put a little bit of work into it.”

Scholarships are important, Foy said, but she makes it a point to tell students that they shouldn’t just go to whatever school gives them the most money.

“You should be looking for the best fit,” she said. “You’re going to be living in this community for two to four years. So, is this a community you can see yourself living in? Not only that, but is this a coaching style that you gel with? This coach, at this particular school — are you going to get a long with him or her? We just try to focus on some off-the-beaten-path things that students maybe haven’t considered yet.”

Whether Foy is selected as a winner of the Casper Start-Up Challenge or not, her idea is a good one. Her business plan is a good one. And it’s something that will be able to help hundreds, maybe even thousands, of students as they embark on the next chapter of their careers — and their lives.

Foy appreciates what the Casper Start-Up Challenge is doing because, while she created something that could encourage rodeo athletes to go to college elsewhere, she also wants students, and adults, to stay in Wyoming. And she believes things like the Start-Up Challenge encourage that.

“Programs like the Casper Start-Up Challenge really fuel the entrepreneurial spirit,” she stated. “That spirit is already very vibrant in our community, and even our state as a whole, and I think programs like this only strengthen the desire to stay in Wyoming. We’re a pretty tax-friendly state when it comes to entrepreneurship. And so, if there are more programs like this it will support that structure and that spirit of entrepreneurship.”

Foy, as well as the other four finalists in the Casper Start-Up Challenge, has that entrepreneurial spirit in spades. It’s why Bullfrog Recruiting Solutions is already as successful as it is. But she believes that winning the challenge would help her business become even more successful, thus helping others find success in their own fields.

“The priority of this program and this portal is twofold,” she said. “We want to help make the connection between student-athletes and college rodeo coaches. But, on the other side, for college rodeo coaches, I want to empower them and provide professional development for them and kind of instill a higher level of expectation, because not only can they bring up our next generation of national champions; they’re also getting our next generation of humans prepared to go out in the big, bold, real world. And so, not only do we want to help student-athletes, but we also want to empower our rodeo coaches to know that they can shape the next generation — not just inside the arena, but outside of the arena as well.”

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