Jake Montgomery on the wild ride of carnival ownership

In 2009, Sam’s Carnival, based out of Oklahoma City, obtained new ownership. Gary and Jodi Montgomery became partners with Sam Whitaker and from then on out would be running the show.

Their son, Jake Montgomery, now a sophomore on the Arizona State hockey team, was in ninth grade at the time, and would help around the carnival wherever he could.

Running a carnival is an all-day job, and quite physically demanding, the younger Montgomery admits.

“You’re constantly busy,” he told Pucks and Recreation. “Outside of a lunch break, you spend most of the day working to make sure it all runs good.”

For a Division I athlete, the combination of effort and enjoyment is hardly foreign. And while the work at the carnival is constant, Montgomery still found some time to play the games when he pitched in. Some, like “Make the bottle stand up,” are difficult, and require hand-eye coordination.

His favorite though, is “Shoot out the star,” a game in which the player shoots BB’s at a paper, attempting to fill in a small star. “Make the bottle stand up” is a game where you must put a rubber ring around a bottle and pull it up and make it stand on a slightly sloped piece of wood.

The fun aspect of Sam’s is sustained, in part, through meticulous maintenance. Jake’s father, Gary, who originally owned a diesel repair shop in Minnesota, has made external headlines with his above-and-beyond safety precautions. Some states require carnival rides to be checked once a year, whereas Gary checks every ride once a day.

There are many lessons that Jake took from his father’s work ethic. “I have so much respect for him,” he said. “It wasn’t about the money, he wanted to make it better. He still takes classes on how to improve the safety and operations of his rides. I’ve really taken away his work ethic as something for my life.”

Sam’s currently caters to communities in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana. Constantly travelling across those eight states can be strenuous, but it is likewise comparable to the traveling Jake Montgomery undertook as a junior hockey player in Sioux City, Iowa.

“The travel time depends on where you’re going,” he said. “But you are travelling every week for eight months out of the year.”

It can be tough for people not in the business to fully understand just how difficult it is to run a carnival. There is so much work involved in the setting up and running of the rides themselves that most people are not cut out for the work.

“Most people have experience with county fairs, but this is every week,” said Montgomery. “It takes a week to set up, but it must come down in a day. My mom is the glue that holds it all together, doing all of the managing.”

Back in 2009, Gary, who had worked at the Minnesota State Fair, was approached about running his current operation. Before he decided, he made sure to get the advice of his family members first, including Jake, who was just 14 at the time.

But when the family first got involved with the fair, there was a bit of a surprise that came with it.

“People view it differently that what it actually is,” Montgomery said. “They have a preconceived notion of what we are, but we’re really just normal.”

And while Montgomery is focused on hockey in the present day, he has not forgotten the family business, nor has he ruled out working at the carnival after graduation.

“I could do it for a few years, yeah,” he said. “They could always use more help, and I can learn a lot from them.”

The lessons Jake has learned while working at the carnival will stay with him for the rest of his life, as challenging work will stick with you forever. And the work ethic he has picked up from his family is sure to come in handy on the ice as Arizona State, coming off its first full-fledged Division I campaign, looks to establish itself on the college hockey scene in the coming seasons.