Some of the most amazing rides at the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo don’t involve a bull or a bucking bronc.
Instead, members of the elite Navy parachute team known as the Leap Frogs drop into the 700-by-200-foot Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena from heights between 4,000 and 6,000 feet.
It’s a piece of cake for these guys, who had to demonstrate they can land in a much smaller, 20-by-40-foot box 10 times in a row just to be on the team. But their trick is fun no matter what time of day, and it never fails to draw cheers from the 19,000-strong crowd.
It’s particularly impressive at night, with a fountain of flashy pyrotechnics blazing from their heels as they fall from the sky in highly maneuverable parachutes.
The result resembles a fancy, live-action fireworks show — one that has uncanny longevity and precision, because the “fireworks” are attached to a small group of people who are as elite at what they do as the professional cowboys who compete in the Daddy of ’em All.
“This is all a very carefully choreographed event,” said Lt. Nick Obletz, the officer in charge of the Leap Frog team at Cheyenne Frontier Days this year. “A lot of it has to do with the winds and the weather. From when and where we position the aircraft to where the jumpmaster is directing the exit of all the parachutes from the aircraft.
“All that is carefully planned and choreographed and rehearsed, so that we end up in the right place.”
The team knows all kinds of cool-looking formations they have practiced and practiced again that they can perform on the way down.
“We can stack three or four canopies in a row on top of each other and then have a giant flag below it,” he said. “We can have people locking (their) legs (together) and going 60 mph toward the ground at the stadium and then breaking at about 300 feet and bringing it in.”
Cheyenne A Must Every Year
All the special trick maneuvers that are performed for the public are practiced the first three months of every year, Obletz said. Each member of the team also jumps at least 300 to 400 times a year.
“The average experience level on the team is about 1,000 jumps per person,” Obletz said. “So, this is all we do for three years, and we really enjoy it. It’s very special to be able to do it in front of a crowd, especially a crowd like the one we have here in Cheyenne.”
Cheyenne, in fact, is a “must circle” on the calendar, Obletz said, because of how “amazing the folks are here, and how good they are to folks in the military.”
Obletz hasn’t been to Cheyenne Frontier Days before, so he wasn’t sure the event could really live up to all the hype he was hearing. But he has not been disappointed so far.
“The caliber of the bull riders and the whole organization, from the Cheyenne Military Committee to the overall organization, I’m just in awe of how professional the organization is,” Obletz said. “We’re just lucky to be part of this, and we’re happy to have been invited.”
After three years of service on the Leap Frogs, Obletz will return to the SEAL team he was previously with, where he will share the skills he has learned, helping train others and spreading these precision air capabilities around.
That three-year limit on membership in the Leap Frogs doesn’t mean Obletz won’t jump any more with the team.
“We always invite folks who have been on the team back to jump with us,” he said. “They’ve developed the unique skill set that we have to have on the team.”
Obletz wanted to join the Leap Frogs because it’s fun traveling across the country to show what the team can do.
One of the highlights this year was jumping into the airshow at the AFC championship football game in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Throughout the year we’ll jump into air shows, football games, soccer games,” Obletz said. “Any kind of entertainment event that we can safely jump into in front of a lot of folks, to really show the public a glimpse, a peek behind the curtain of the SEAL community and of Naval Special Warfare.”
But it’s not just that the Leap Frogs are fun. Obletz also really likes the attitude of the Leap Frog team members, too.
“I was really inspired by how they carried themselves, and was very interested in joining a group of people who are able to keep very calm in very high, high stress, very public situations.”
The Navy Leap Frog parachute team always gets a huge crowd pop when it drops in from thousands of feet in the air with a huge American flag. (Matt Idler for Cowboy State Daily) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs) 
The elite Navy SEAL parachute team Leap Frogs has made a tradition of jumping into the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena before rodeo performances. The team members then spend time visiting with the public. (Courtesy Navy Leap Frogs)
Cowboy Culture Blends Well With Military
A secondary reason that the Leap Frogs like coming to Cheyenne Frontier Days is the cowboy culture, Chief Nick Anaya told Cowboy State Daily.
“We’re looking for qualified candidates who, you know, fit the mold to go through these difficult pipelines,” he said. “People who come to these things, they work on farms, they’re strong, they love their country, they’re raised right. So, this is a good demographic of people to try to find the next generation of war fighters.”
Obletz, meanwhile, said he likes the grit that he sees out there in the arena.
“What you see in the cowboy culture with the grit, and just generally soft-spoken folks who have a strong heart — those are the things, those are the characteristics and values that I want on my team, if we’re ever asked to go do very high risk things overseas on behalf of the country,” Obletz said. “Those are the people, those are the values, those are the folks I know I can rely on. So, that’s really why we’re here, to talk to folks just like that, and see if they are interested in joining our community.”
Obletz said he’s had more than one cowboy come up to him and say they could never do what he does.
“And I tell them, ‘Man, we need to get you up in the sky,’” Obletz said. “Because if you can do what I just saw you do, you’re gonna have no problem in the air, working with us.”
That’s an assessment Anaya shares.
“They have a lot of unknown risk,” he said. “We’re actually quite a bit safer than I think a bull rider is on a 1,500-pound animal. They don’t know what that animal is going to do.”
Anaya said he’d love to recruit more bull riders, but one challenge with that is sometimes a cowboy has too much “hardware” in their body, from breaking bones in past rodeo events. It’s not an automatic deal-breaker though. It’s on a case-by-case basis.
“They have everything else that it would take to be successful,” Anaya said. “With bull riding, you have to find a center, a balance. That’s the same thing (for us), we have to get stable in the air and get control.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
