KW3 Visits with the 2023 Apple Blossom Royalty

What a night! This past Saturday night (February 11th) The 104th Apple Blossom Royalty Pageant resulted in the selection of: Queen Scarlette Cron,  Princess Dylan Schmitten &  Princess Natalie Pearson.

These three will spend the coming weeks and months representing our community.

On Tuesday, KW3’s Connor & Aly were privileged to be part of their busy media rounds. Here are my notes from that morning.

Here’s how it went.

Connor: Cece (Apple Blossom Chaperon), thank you for bringing in the royalty  Come on. Who wants to go first? Somebody stepped to the mic.

(Princess Dylan Schmitten steps up to our guest mic)

Aly:  Get a girl

Connor: All right. Good morning!

Dylan Schmitten: Good morning.

Connor: Last month, when you were top 10,  How did your parents react? 

Dylan: They were very excited! But they were really nervous because I was announced last out of the 10. So they were like, Okay, there's one more left, please. Just like a sigh of relief

Connor: This past Saturday night where you announced first or second?

Dylan: First! 

Connor: Okay. Little sigh of relief there. Right? 

Dylan: Right. Yeah. 

Connor: So in your family who's the most excited that you have been selected in the royalty? 

Dylan: I think my brother honestly, I just don't think he wants to show it…But he's like, Oh my gosh, I’m the princesses brother. He's still just Camden. I think he's really excited for it.

Aly: That’s amazing.

Connor: You're gonna go to Boise State University. 

Dylan: Yes!

Connor: you love hiking. If you love hiking, you're gonna love Boise. 

Dylan: Yes, it's a lot like Wenatchee, it's just like a bigger Wenatchee which I really like.

Connor:  Yeah, that's great. Your favorite song is “Till You Can't” by Cody Johnson (Plays song) 

Connor: What do you plan to study at Boise State? 

Dylan: Right now, the plan is elementary education. 

Connor: What grade do you want to teach? 

Dylan: Kindergarten. 

Connor: My wife taught that for years! Now she's the librarian at her school. Dylan, Congrats again!

Dylan Schmitten: Thank you for having me. 

Connor: Who wants to go next? How about how about Natalie? Princess Natalie Pearson!

Natalie Pearson:  Good morning. 

Aly: Hi. It's good to see you. 

Natalie: And its good to see you too. 

Connor: You're the captain of your softball team. 

Natalie: Yes, I am -  for the Sun Devils (local select youth select softball program). 

Connor: They travel around. 

Natalie: Yes. 

Connor:  Good on you - how often do you practice?

Natalie: Yes. So right now we actually are just practicing Sundays. We're in an indoor facility. …It's by the college. I don't know. 

Aly: The armory.

Natalie: Yeah, the armory… Yeah, we're actually practicing in the armory right now, which is a little interesting, but we work around it. And then once weather gets better, we'll hopefully move to Sterling.

Connor: That's awesome. So what position do you play for the Sun Devils? 

Natalie: For the Sun Devils. I mainly play outfield. Sometimes you'll see me at third base. 

Connor: That's good. Hey, so in the fall, I'm just reading about you. You're gonna be heading to Eastern Washington University. And you want to go into the dental hygiene program - do you know anybody who’ a dental hygienist? 

Natalie: I do. Yeah. Um, so my dad's aunt is actually a dental hygienist and I went and job shadowed last summer in Tri Cities, which is where she were her dental offices. And I honestly thought ‘maybe this might make me not want to go into this profession’. But all it did is make me more excited about it. And I really got to see what the job is going to be like.

Aly: Oh, that's an important job.

Natalie: Yes. Because having, you know, feeling good about your smile is really important. 

Connor: How did you come to love Adele?

Natalie: Well, my mom, this was back when CDs were a thing you can just plug your phone in. But um, my mom on road trips, she had like, probably three or four CDs and three out of the four were Adele. 

(Connor plays Natalie’s favorite song “Chasing Pavements” by Adele)

Connor: Good stuff. it's good to visit with you, Natalie, Congratulations!

Natalie:  Thank you, it's good to visit with you. 

Connor: All right on to the Queen with Scarlette Cron. Hello, it's good to see you! 

Scarlette Cron: Good to see you. Good morning. 

Connor: Good morning. So you were the last to be announced. Were you thinking Oh, no!???

Scarlette:  Well, I still had hope - like, this could still happen. I it was not in my mind…Honestly. I mean, just the girls I was holding hands with like, everyone up there was so extremely deserving. And like, I don't know, I still get emotional almost talking about it. Because it could have been any one of us. And it was honestly just a really good day for me. 

Connor: Congrats to you and your family. Apple Blossom is such a huge tradition of over 100 years! I'm watching 1923 Right now - the Yellowstone prequel.  Our festival started before that! When electricity was just starting to come into the valley, and motorized cars. Queen Scarlett, who in your family loves Mazzy star?

Scarlette:  My mom My mom has listened to Mazzy star since I was like very little and then I feel like she kind of laid back off of it for a couple of years. Then I started listening to it again and she heard me listening to one day - and she said, 'I knew Mazzy star before you were breathing.'  Now we listen together. It's kind of special for us. 

(Connor plays Scarlette's favorite song "Blue Flower" by Mazzy Star)

Connor: Queen Scarlette - if you can hang out with someone for a day it'd be Christiane Amanpour, the longtime CNN CORRESPONDENT.

Scarlette: Yes. She's great - a very composed lady. I mean, she can literally be standing in the line of fire and she'll just be calmly reporting on it, like my tea was just being delivered. She's great. 

Connor: Would you ever want to do media? 

Scarlette: Definitely, I think that I really value her experiences and the way that she can share her experiences and her intellect. I really liked that. And I would love to aspire to have some sort of career like that someday.

Connor: You’ll be going to Western over in Bellingham. It's more drizzly over there. You want to go into sociology, why sociology? 

Scarlette: I took a sociology class last year at the college. And it was the first thing I loved learning. I love school, but that was the first thing that I learned that I was like, wow, I could just not even do this for the rest of my life - and learn for the rest of my life. Like - there's so much there to learn. So much of it is so applicable to so many parts of our everyday society.  And so I really want to be a professor of sociology so I can continue to learn that for the rest of my life...and sharing that knowledge would be amazing to help our future generations get along. 

Connor: We do need that. Queen Scarlet, It's nice to visit with you.

Aly: Yeah. Congratulations! 

Scarlette: Thank you!

Connor: All right  - Hey, we could see you again in April? You'll come back and you'll actually host. Back in the day we used to have royalty stop in at 5:45 in the morning. Don’t worry - We won't do that anymore. Nowadays we have you come in at eight.

(All three girls looked relieved)

Aly: Congratulations to all of you. 

Connor: Thank you CeCe for bringing them!

Connor & Aly then took pics outside our studios on Wenatchee Avenue. As mentioned, we look forward to visiting again with all three ladies: April 24th, 25th & 26th - the week of the start to Apple Blossom 2023! Big thanks to Darci Christoferson, the festival administrator, for setting this all up.

Get info on all things Apple Blossom: AppleBlossom.org