Kids take center stage at Apple Blossom Pepsi-Cola Youth Day in Wenatchee

WENATCHEE — The annual Apple Blossom Pepsi-Cola Youth Day on Sunday may have been the third day of the Festival, but it had to feel like the very first day for all the kids, who were the focus of everything all day long.

Memorial Park was taken over by new booths from various companies around town, each of them providing activities or keepsakes for kids visiting the park. Games of plinko, giant prize wheels to spin, a fishing derby with rubber ducks and more were on hand for youngsters, while kids a little older were encouraged to try their hand in the AppleSox “batting cage,” enjoy the inflatables and even throw an “axe” or two.

But it wasn’t all just games in the park on Sunday. On the GESA Credit Union Entertainment Stage, troupes from Fabulous Feet Dance Studio dazzled the crowd — and what a crowd there was on hand! Hundreds sat in the grass on the hill between the stage and the Blossom & Brews beer garden, cheering on their own kids or just enjoying the show.

After the dance performances, there was a presentation of scholarships for this year’s high school seniors who were the beneficiaries of the Cakes for College program, a scholarship presented by the Keep it in the Valley Foundation. Those are the volunteers who operate the non-profit “Pennsylvania Dutch” Funnel Cake stand at the Apple Blossom food fair every year.

The Foundation provides $1,500 scholarships for seniors entering college to attend Wenatchee Valley College, and the money comes entirely from 100% of the proceeds of the Funnel Cake stand.

Tradition has it that every year on the main stage, they hold a funnel cake eating contest. If for some reason you’re unfamiliar with the delicacy, it’s literally just a lacy criss-cross pouring of dough into hot oil until it makes a small cake about the size of a paper plate. It’s then dusted in powdered sugar, and you can add any number of toppings to it. The favorite seems to be fresh strawberries and whipped cream. The treats are so popular that by the end of the day, they will have gone through all 180 pounds of strawberries cut by the volunteers in the morning.

The contest itself is not about quantity, but speed. Each contestant is blindfolded and must keep their hands under the table as they are fed by a partner standing behind them. Some use the “taco method,” folding the funnel cake in half for ease of biting, while others prefer the classic “stuff and chew” strategy.

The three categories were elementary, middle school and high school, although two of the high school participants were future AppleSox players, so the stakes were high, since they were faced off against a junior girl and a freshman girl. It wasn’t just the “G.O.A.T.” trophies they were vying for either; the elementary division was competing for $50, the middle schoolers for $75, and the high schoolers for a cool $100 each for the feeder and the eater.

In a stunning upset, the freshman girls took the crown, crediting their tactic of the feeder smashing up the funnel cake before stuffing it in the mouth of the eater.

Then, in a special round, both the Apple Blossom Royalty and the Junior Royalty took the stage to compete in a round. Our money was on Princess Daeja, as she was the oldest eater at the table, the other two spots taken by junior royalty. But although Princess Daeja was a good sport with whipped cream all over her face, ultimately, the round went to Junior Princess Elizabeth Carter.

It feels a little like that should have been a foregone conclusion, if people were paying attention to the biographies of the Royal Court and Junior Royalty — only one young girl listed eating something sweet as her favorite thing to do. Funnel cakes may not be gelato from Pybus, but Princess Elizabeth is surely displaying the kind of dedication to her favorite activities that it’s going to take to become the NASA engineer she dreams of being one day.

The Pepsi-Cola Youth Day was a giant success, and mostly it was thanks to the kids themselves.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media