MARION—Monday afternoon at the Marion County Fair, the new fair royalty was selected for the upcoming year.
Stepping into the role of king, Adrian Starcher, a 16-year-old junior at Marion Harding is looking forward to the duties he will have.
“I hope to visit as many fairs as possible; I have already been looking into going to Cincinnati fair, Delaware County’s fair, and hopefully to the state fair too.
Starcher is in his seventh year of 4-H and is a member of the Greencamp Shamrocks 4-H club. His projects at the fair are Drug & Alcohol Abuse, Yeast Breads on the Rise, and Rabbits.
Being the Marion County Fair king is something that Starcher has had on his mind since he was a little kid.
“I’ve known I wanted to be king since I was little because my earliest memories of the fair, I remember that the fair royalty were people that were held at high standards of respect, and the higher respect that these people had led me to one day want to become fair king. When I was younger, I became fair prince, and now I am fair king,” Starcher said.
This year’s queen, Reagan Fitsko, is a 17-year-old going into her senior year at River Valley High School, where she is a member of the River Valley FFA Chapter.
Aside from being in River Valley FFA, she was also a member of the Whetstone Wranglers since she was eight. Throughout her years in 4-H, Fitsko has shown dairy beef feeders.
While being queen isn’t a role she’s wanted for a long time, it is one that she is looking forward to with great excitement.
“I am very good friends with Abby [Isler], who is last year’s queen, and we were here [Coliseum] doing Food for America with the third graders, and she was just like, ‘Hey, I think this would be a really cool thing for you to do,’ and I applied and after that, here we are,” Fitsko said. “I spent a lot of time on my application though, and I prepared pretty well for my interview, my ag teachers helped me, and they walked me through some of it so that helped out a lot.”
When it comes to her goals as queen, Fitsko hopes she can be a good role model to the little kids.
“I remember when I was just a little thing running around here and seeing them, I was like, ‘Wow, they’re so cool,’ so I hope I can be a good role model to them like they were to me,” Fitsko said.
This year’s prince, Josiah Dawson, is a 14-year-old going into his freshman year of high school and is a fifth-year 4-H member in the Greencamp Shamrocks club, through which he shows chickens at the fair.
“I’ve known since the beginning of the 4-H season this year that I wanted to be the prince. I wanted to be the prince so that I could help people and feel responsible,” Dawson said.
To round out this year’s royalty, is the princess Marissa Loyer.
Loyer is a 15-year-old sophomore, and a member of the Marion County Sharpshooters 4-H club and River Valley FFA, through which she shows goats and beef. Loyer has been in 4-H since she was nine years old.
“I remember my first year in 4-H, watching the coronation and always thinking, ‘I want to do that.” so, it’s kind of been a thing in the making,” Loyer said.
Loyer’s goal for the year as princess is to go to as many fairs as possible.