By Kat Bryant

Grays Harbor News Group

This year’s Loggers Playday queen is Taylor Strom, daughter of Rick and Karen Strom of Hoquiam.

The Hoquiam High School senior is ASB president and returning co-chair of Food Ball. She’s also active on the soccer, basketball and track teams, and she served last year in the HHS Hope Squad, a suicide prevention group.

She is also deeply involved in the youth leadership group Grays Harbor Foursquare Church. “A big part of my life is being a member of Young Life,” she said. “I am also a leader for Wyldlife, the middle school version of the program.”

Taylor happens to be the sister of 2002’s Playday queen, Keri Strom.

“That is a big reason why I wanted to be on the court,” she said. “I have always looked up to the girls on the float since I was a little girl.”

The princesses are selected each spring by a committee that takes into account the young women’s grades, community involvement and other factors. Once they join the court, each must sell Playday buttons and take part in assorted activities — parades, Dennis Co. demo days, Playday meetings, etc. — to earn points.

A few weeks before the big event, those points are tallied up to determine which one will reign as queen.

One of the required activities is washing the Playday truck the day before specific events. (The truck and the court travel all over the region to participate in parades.) This has been Taylor’s favorite element of serving on the Playday court, largely because the princesses enjoyed cutting loose and enjoying the task. Four of them have been friends since grade school, she said, and all five are close friends now.

But Taylor’s secret was focusing more on sales of the $5 scholarship buttons than the regular $3 Playday admission buttons. “It turns out those are worth a lot more in points,” she said, because all of those funds go toward Playday court scholarships.

She was “overwhelmed” when she found out her efforts had been rewarded — and then even more so when the news was posted on the Playday Facebook page and received more than 3,000 views. “I couldn’t believe how far it reached!”

She said she’s had loads of fun serving on the court and hopes to try her hand (and feet) at log-rolling during Playday.

After she graduates HHS next spring, Taylor intends to go to Eastern Washington University to study to become a physical therapist.