Brown News Service

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TROY - Turns out mother really did know best.

For years, Chris Phillips tried to get her daughter, Shannon, to enter the Troy Strawberry Festival Queen Pageant. And for years, Shannon demurred.

“My mom had been trying for awhile to get me to enter,” Phillips said. “But this year, my choir director told me I should enter. He said, ‘We haven’t had a girl from Bethel win it before.’ I have been tap dancing for eight years. He asked me to do it in our school musical. After that, he told me I should do this. So I decided to try something new.”

It’s a good thing - for her efforts, Phillips, the daughter of Jack and Chris Phillips, was named the 2009 Strawberry Festival Queen at the April 24 pageant.

“I couldn’t really believe it,” Phillips said. “My only goal, really, was to get on the court. If I had gotten that, I would have been happy. On the night of the pageant, they kept calling the names of all the girls that were on the court. When they called my name as the queen, I was just like, ‘Me? What?’ I guess I never really expected to win. I just kept looking around in the audience for my mom.”

After she got over the shock of winning the pageant, Phillips was faced with the shock of all the duties being the Strawberry Festival Queen entails. While she was fully expecting a busy weekend during the Strawberry Festival, Phillips soon found out being queen means much more than just presiding over the festival for one weekend.

She’s already participated in some of the events that take place before festival weekend, including the Strawberry Festival Bowling Tournament.

“The entire court and our advisers went and bowled - I didn’t bowl very well,” Phillips said with a laugh. “It was nothing to brag about. But it was fun, regardless.”

And once the festival is over, Phillips will participate in a number of parades and festivals throughout the area. She said her summer schedule is filling up fast.

“My summer is going to be full of parades,” Phillips said. “I’ve also done a lot of radio and newspaper interviews. I know it’s going to be a really hectic summer.”

There is one thing, however, she’s looking forward to more than any other event.

“I am really looking forward to riding on the float in the Strawberry Festival Parade with my

court,” Phillips said. “I saw some pictures of it from last year and it really looks like a lot of fun.”

Once her duties as queen are over this summer, Phillips - a recent Bethel High School graduate - plans to attend Ohio University and study psychology and education.

“I’m going to be rooming with my best friend,” she said. “We’ve been best friends our whole lives. Our moms are friends and they were pregnant with us together.”