Two high school seniors seek title of Urbanna Oyster Festival Queen

The 2023 Urbanna Oyster Festival (UOF) Queen and Little Miss Spat will be crowned Friday, Nov. 3, at 4 p.m. inside the Middlesex Volunteer Fire Department station (the Urbanna firehouse) at 335 Virginia St. This year, the two Queen contestants and four Little Miss Spat contestants raised thousands of dollars and contributed dozens of hours of community service.

As the Oyster Festival has evolved over the years, so has the selection of the Queen and Little Miss Spat (a spat is a baby oyster). What was once a beauty pageant is now a scholarship-based competition for the Queens. The Queen contestants must be high school seniors and residents of Middlesex County. Each Queen contestant mentors a first grade contestant as her Little Miss Spat.

The Queen and Little Miss Spat competition starts early in the spring and extends until the crowning.

This year there are just two queen hopefuls — Carina Bednarczyk and Sophia Koontz. Both are 16-year-old  (at sign-up time) Hartfield residents. Little Miss Spat co-contestants include, for Carina, 6 year olds (at sign-up time) Lacey Paige Edwards of Saluda and Cayden Miller of Locust Hill; and for Sophia, 6 year olds (at sign-up time) Caitlynn Brooke Epperly of Locust Hill and Margeaux Violet Page of Topping. Normally, there is a single Little Miss Spat hopeful paired with a Queen hopeful, but due to fewer Queen contestants this year there are two Little Miss Spat hopefuls per queen. Each team and contestants have been featured in the Southside Sentinel.

This may be the first year since the competition’s founding in 1960 there are only two queen contestants, according to Christy Hogge, who serves as a competition co-coordinator with Kristin Harris. She said there were six originally signed up this year to participate, but two dropped out early due to scheduling conflicts and two more dropped out later due to work, school and family responsibilities.

The Queen contestants are judged in five areas:

1. Individual community service project.
2. Individual judges’ interview.
3. Academic achievement.
4. A spontaneously written response to a random question.
5. Overall participation in the competition.

The Little Miss Spat contestants are judged separately from the Queens in the following areas:

1. Participation at an ice cream social and a tea party.
2. Individual judges’ interview.
3. Overall participation.

The foundation of this competition is character building and community service. Each Queen contestant must volunteer a minimum of 25 hours benefiting Middlesex County.

Scholarships for the Queen contestants have been made possible by the generosity of local businesses.