Ciara Galvin
ciaragalvin@mayonews.ie
Trisha Kay Hughes took the coveted title of Queen of the Lakes 2012, last week. The Texas-born young lady and daughter of proud parents Frank and Patricia Hughes, entertained the huge crowd at The Valkenburg with a comedy sketch involving a tale about an Irish Farmers Association’s march to Dublin.
To the surprise of everyone that knows the accomplished Irish dancer, Trisha Kay chose to go down the route of comedy instead of her well-established talent of Irish dancing. The judges had a tough role in deciding who would take the title, as all 15 girls were superb on the night, with music playing, singing and storytelling in large supply.
Another winner on the night was Martin Farragher, who was awarded the title of escort of the year after gaining the majority of the competing girls’ votes.
Liam Horan acted as MC for the occasion and put the girls and their escorts through their paces.
Although the Queen of the Lakes was the focal point, many other events were staged throughout the ten day festival.
Speaking to The Mayo News, Chairperson of the festival, Donal McCormack described it as ‘a huge success’ and described the new Queen as ‘a worthy winner’.
Speaking about the festival’s extended run, Donal felt the committee and all involved succeeded in facilitating the festival’s ‘transition from a weekend event to a ten day festival’.
“With Heritage Day, the mini Queen of the Lakes and all the children’s events being well supported, we feel it went well. Everybody at Tacú Family Resource Centre were brilliant in helping us organise the various children’s events.”
Although admitting that somethings went against them, Donal hopes that the town benefitted from the festival.
“I suppose it’s more up to the business people to decide if it was a success. The aim was to get people into the town and I think Heritage Day really did that with the help of the Western Veteran and Vintage Motor Club.”
Donal described the committees decision to introduce a new local band ‘Quality Street’ to the street entertainment lineup along with Chris Loughrey and The SouthSun Band as ‘a good thing’.
“We tried as hard as we could and overall we’re very happy,” concluded McCormack.
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