Five Hills royalty have corny fun promoting city in Holland

The Five Hills royalty had some good ol’ fashioned corny fun representing the City of Copperas Cove at the Holland Corn Festival this past weekend. After participating in the annual parade on Main Street through downtown and ending at the fairgrounds, the royalty switched out of their pageant wear and into casual clothes to get down to the serious business of competing in the various corn-related competitions.  After Cove titleholders won two of the contests last year, this year’s royalty had a reputation to uphold.

The queens gave it their best effort corn eating, spitting, bobbing, throwing, and relaying. Young Miss Five Hills Hayleigh Walker ate her corn on the cob so fast it was like a video on high speed.  With corn on both sides of her face, she quickly ran her corn cob to the judge for inspection only to be sent back to competition area to continue her efforts. Senior Ms. Five Hills Hope Ransom was only a few kernels behind her also getting sent back by the judge.  Ultimately, the two queens edged out the native Hollandites to take both first and second place in the competition.

“I like to eat vegetables, although this is not something I would ordinarily do,” Walker said, admitting that she usually does not eat nearly as fast as she ate in the competition which earned her the first-place trophy.

Despite being the senior queen, Ransom held her own with the younger royalty.

“I was going as fast as I could,” Ransom said. “I was happy to see my sister queen win.”

Ransom also got second place in the corn cob bobbing contest and spit her corn kernel the farthest of all the royalty at 17.2 feet. The royalty also placed third in the corn cob relay contest.  

The titleholders helped with the Copperas Cove library’s summer library program and monthly Animal Shelter free adoption. The community service platform of Pre-teen Miss Five Hills Emily Kimball is the humane treatment of animals.

“I loved walking all of the dogs and bathing them and showing them to people to get them adopted,” Kimball said. “We even got to name the new ones that had come in that did not have names yet.”

The titleholders also assisted with the Fort Hood Family Housing Golf Fore Education Tournament to benefit Lemonade Day.  The tournament raised more than $20,000.

In royal sightings this week, the titleholders will be busy creating summer literacy libraries, the community service project of Junior Miss Five Hills Leslie Lindholm. They will also attend the Juneteenth pageant and parade as well as Star Group-Veterans Helping Veterans annual Independence Day Picnic on Saturday, June 24.