News from the Marysville Strawberry Festival

On Friday, March 4, Marysville Strawberry Festival crowned their 2022 Royalty. It was an exciting evening for all. The candidates who will be representing Marysville this year are Queen Amelia (Amee) Belmont, 1st Princess Rachel Turral, 2nd Princess Gabriella (Gabby) Samaniego and Alternative Ziri Morales. The Royalty will be doing their first appearance at the Daffodil Parades in early April.

Keeping with tradition it is interesting how families really get involved with the Strawberry Festival. For the Turral family Rachel’s mother Laurie was 1st Princess in 1983, sister Sarah was Queen in 2017 and younger sister Elizabeth was Junior Royalty, and now Rachel, the last of the Turral sisters, is 1st Princess. For the Morales family, Ziri’s older sisters Azzlinn was Senior Royalty in 2008-2009, Zinead was Junior Royalty 2016-2017, and Ziri was Junior Royalty in 2018-2019 and now is our Alternative for this year. For 90 years the Marysville Strawberry Festival has been helping families and their children with scholarships for college or trade school. Hopefully this tradition will keep going.

Also, we are excited to announce that the Trike Race is back. The Marysville Strawberry Festival and 5 Rights Brewery have joined together to have the Trike Race which will be held the week of the Festival. There has been a lot of interest in getting the Trike Race going again so if you would like more information or want to be a participant please go to our website at Maryfest.com or stop in at 5 Rights Brewery on 3rd St. and talk with Sean.

We have a great need for someone who can drive the truck and trailer. The truck does not have air brakes so no CDL is required. The driver will need to work with the Float committee to help assemble the float, drive the float in the parade and then reverse the process and bring the truck and trailer back to Marysville. All expenses are covered by the Festival. On the days that you would drive it does require an all-day commitment, usually on a Saturday, as we often leave early morning and return late afternoon or evening. You will have fun meeting other float drivers and parade participants, visiting other parts of Washington that you may have not been to before and making new friends and acquaintances. For more information please call Tom King at 425-238-0994 or President Gail Frost at 425-777-5282.

Another area we could use volunteers is with the Hospitality and Parade committees. For hospitality help is needed for the week of the festival, preparing food for our out-of-town guests, helping with the formal dinner and other activities that occur thru the weekend. For the Parade committee there is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done, help organize the parade route and assist as needed. We do require that all volunteers go through a background check which is for everyone’s safety.

If you would like to become involved with Strawberry Festival in other ways, please call 360-659-7664 or email us at [email protected]. Or if you would like to just check us out, our monthly meetings start at 6 p.m. and are held the third Tuesday of each month at our office at 1412 1st Street.