A new year means new royalty for the Sequim Irrigation Festival.

Five contestants — Malachi Byrne, Glenna Cary, Joanna Morales, Lily Tjemsland and Roxy Woods — seek a seat at the upcoming Sequim Irrigation Festival Royalty Scholarship Pageant. They’ll share creative displays, answer questions, and perform at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22 in Sequim High School’s Auditorium, 533 N. Sequim Ave.

Tickets are available in advance from contestants and at the First Federal Sequim Avenue branch; and at the event door. Cost is $15 for adults and $5 for those 10 and younger.

This year marks the festival’s 130th anniversary, and maintains its streak as Washington’s longest continuous running festival. The royalty will represent Sequim with appearances at about 20 events across the region, including the Sequim Irrigation Festival’s two weekends of events set for May 2-10.

After a year as royalty, they’ll receive scholarships for their efforts.

Read more about upcoming events at irrigationfestival.com.

Malachi Byrne

Sponsor: BrokersGroup Real Estate

Platform: raise awareness for Captain Joseph House Foundation

Creative Display: Perform “Ashokan Farewell” on violin

Malachi Byrne is a Sequim native. He said one thing that is distinct about him is his many interests, including mountain biking, fiddling, video game design, building computers, being outdoors, and much more.

“I am very busy for a high school student,” he said. “It’s good to be busy.”

While he has many interests, Byrne said his passion has always been in helping others, which led him to discover scouting.

He joined Cub Scouts as a first grader and as a Life Rank in Scouting America, formerly Boy Scouts of America, is working toward his Eagle Scout Rank, the highest rank in scouting. Byrne said scouting’s virtues have helped him become the person he is today and as a member of Scout Troop 90, he’s been involved in supporting many community organizations.

While serving as a scout at the Captain Joseph House Foundation’s Memorial Day ceremony, Byrne said he discovered his desire to support families who have lost loved ones in service to the country. If selected to the royalty, he’d want to support the education of the Captain Joseph House Foundation.

Upon graduating high school and Peninsula College with an Associate’s degree, Byrne hopes to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to pursue an electrical engineering degree.

In Sequim, his favorite place to go is Carrie Blake Community Park because he has spent so much time there playing, and as a scout volunteering for events such as the Sequim Lavender Festival.

He said the Sequim Irrigation Festival is an important tradition for the community because it brings awareness to the importance of agriculture and local history. He hopes to be the festival’s first king.

Glenna Cary

Glenna Cary

Sponsor: Glamorous

Platform: supporting children in the hospital

Creative Display: singing “Homecoming Queen” by Kelsea Ballerini

Glenna Cary has lived in Sequim her entire life and has always held a passion for cosmetology as she’s helped out in her mother’s salon growing up.

Being a part of the royalty court has been a lifelong dream of hers, she said. When she was little, her mother would do the royalty’s hair before the parade and she loved seeing all the princesses in their dresses.

Since she loved princesses so much as a girl, her mom bid and won a birthday party for Cary when she turned six. The royalty came to her party and gave her a mixed CD of upbeat songs.

“I still have (it) and I listen to it sometimes because it gives me really happy memories,” she said.

She likes the festival because everyone in town seems so happy and that there’s something for everyone.

In her spare time, Cary enjoys making floral arrangements, making new recipes for her family to enjoy for dinner, discovering new skills, and getting a coffee from Original Grinds Coffee Shop (OG) and going to the Dungeness River Railroad Bridge. Asked a fun fact about herself, Cary said she has owned seven birds – Shrek, Jasmine, Olive, Jazzy, Tony, Thud, and Blue.

Cary said she was born with a birth defect that required at least 13 surgeries as a baby leading to a scar on her stomach. She’s worked hard, with support from her family, to overcome body image issues, and has grown to love herself.

For her platform, she has chosen to support hospitalized children with a day of the royalty to paint nails, have fun and help the young patients feel special and have confidence.

She’s working on her cosmetology license apprenticing with her mom.

Joanna Morales

Joanna Morales

Sponsor: Dungeness Kids Co.

Platform: support Sequim Food Bank

Creative Display: Folklórico dance

Joanna Morales has lived in Sequim since age 3. She enjoys the outdoors and visiting Carrie Blake Community Park and Railroad Bridge Park. Morales said she’s gained an appreciation for nature in Sequim, leading her to start a small backyard garden with her parents to grow onions, beans, corn, and more. She also enjoys baking and listening to a variety of music in her free time.

Next school year, she’ll attend the University of Washington to pursue a Biology degree.

Morales said she looks forward to going to the Irrigation Festival each year, especially the Grand Parade. She and her family tend to watch it “anywhere we can get a good view,” which has been the 101 Diner in recent years.

For her, the festival brings up good childhood memories and she’s known many people who have participated in the festival in some capacity, including her cousin Karla Najera, who was crowned queen in 2017.

Asked about a memory that stands out to her, Morales said that while in middle school she planned a family trip to Seattle to see Christmas lights. She booked the tickets, found the routes and ferries, and more.

“I remember being so stressed out until we got there and they stamped the tickets, and once we got in, I was so happy,” she said.

“My parents have always told me I’m really independent, and if I want to do something, I just do it. I of course think it through, first, though.”

Over the last year-and-a-half, Morales has volunteered at the Sequim Food Bank each Saturday and she said it has deeply impacted her. She’s helped lead the Saturday events where teens volunteer for the program and supported Sequim High School’s Boo Hunger Campaign around Halloween.

Morales said she’s passionate about helping other people and her platform will involve raising awareness about food insecurity and encouraging others to get involved in supporting their community.

Lily Tjemsland

Lily Tjemsland

Sponsor: Olympic Theatre Arts

Platform: support the Welfare for Animal Guild (WAG)

Creative Display: acting as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz”

Lily Tjemsland has lived in Sequim since she was 6 and said she’s fortunate to be part of a Sequim pioneer family. Last year, she had the delight of watching her grandmother Shirley be celebrated as an honored pioneer.

Tjemsland said being in a pioneer family has given her a deeper appreciation of Sequim’s sense of community and it’s one of the reasons she wants to be on the royalty court.

Through her years in Sequim, she’s enjoyed going to the Grand Parade, pageant and various festival events and she’s learned how much farming and irrigation has meant to her family and Sequim.

Among her favorite places to go in the area, Tjemsland said she particularly loves the water at the Dungeness Spit. She’s even hiked to the New Dungeness Lighthouse a handful of times.

Her passions in life include science, fashion, art, theater, and volunteering.

She loves all forms of art, including ceramics and theater, and is proud of an Audrey II statue she made last year as an homage to “Little Shop of Horrors.”

“I love that musical so much, and I got to watch it and I felt really inspired so I made a really big Audrey sculpture,” Tjemsland said.

She hopes to attend Stanford or at an Ivy League school to study neuroscience and medical biology, or go abroad to learn international law and diplomacy.

For her creative display, she’ll share her acting chops performing as Dorothy reminiscing about her time in Oz and longing to go back. Tjemsland said she has acted in many plays and has started volunteering for Olympic Theatre Arts. She helped with makeup for the zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.”

Tjemsland is also an animal lover and has three rescue dogs: Martha, Fern and Cosmo. She also volunteered for a few years with an alpaca rescue, and looks to support Welfare for Animals Guild through her platform, if selected.

Roxy Woods

Roxy Woods

Sponsor: Woods Guitar Service

Platform: raise awareness for Celiac Disease

Creative Display: ballet

Roxy Woods moved to Sequim three years ago with her family. She holds a passion for the arts along with science and mathematics. From an early age, Woods said she knew that she wanted to be a ballerina. While she’s done other dance styles, ballet is what she wants to pursue professionally and she said she trains hard to perfect her technique, whether it be with Port Angeles City Ballet or at home.

After graduating high school, she plans to audition for several ballet companies. For the pageant, she’ll perform “Cupid’s Variation” from the “Don Quixote” ballet.

Upon fulfilling her ballet goals, she plans to finish degrees to become a dietitian because healthy eating and dietary awareness is very important to her. She was diagnosed with Celiac Disease at a young age and wants to bring awareness to the disorder, and she might look to do a food drive for gluten-free and Celiac Disease-friendly food items for the Sequim Food Bank.

In Sequim, she enjoys going to Carrie Blake Community Park and its Dog Park with her three dogs Charlotte, Gomez and Pugsley.

While she’s relatively new to the area, Woods said she’s grown up loving festivals and parades, including during her time in Port Orchard and in Hong Kong.

“It’s something that my family always participates in, regardless of where we are,” she said.

In Port Orchard’s Fathoms O’ Fun Festival, she remembers their princesses and a feeling that she wanted to be one, too.

“As I got older and learned more about it, I thought, ‘wow, this is a great community thing too and it’s a great way to get involved and get to know people,’” Woods said.

Her favorite part of any festival is the parade, she said, and she and her family tend to gather in front of the Co-Op Farm and Garden.

Malachi Byrne