Rachel Shortes follows sisters' footsteps in Fair Queen contest

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Fair Queen Fast Facts

Name: Rachel Shortes

Grade: 12th
Club: Mini-Thon
Escort: Andrew Hay
Favorite Fair Food: Milkshakes
Favorite Fair Location: Photography and Art
Rachel Shortes will represent Mini-Thon
in the Fair Queen contest

 A bout with illness at a young age gave Rachel Shortes a heart for kids who have cancer, so she joined the Mini-Thon planning committee.

 "Mini-Thon is a branch off the big THON at Penn State. It supports kids with childhood cancer, and having high schools do it raises a lot of awareness. Seeing what they go through, I feel their pain," she says. "I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease when I was nine, and it’s a life long illness."

To stand in "solidarity" with those kids, Shortes plans to help revive the Mini-Thon at Lampeter-Strasburg, which has stood dormant for several years since its last iteration. 

Mrs. Lindsay Shehan, a second-year social studies teacher, participated in Mini-Thon when she was a teacher at Cedar Crest (see previous LSNews.org coverage), and has built a team of officers at L-S including Shortes.

"Mini-Thon is just now restarting because we didn’t have one in a couple years, so I figured since it’s a new starting club I would volunteer to be a representative of the club to bring more awareness to it," she says.

Shortes plays on the L-S
girls' basketball team
By participating in the Fair Queen contest, Shortes follows in the footsteps of her two older sisters -- Becky and Amy -- each of whom represented high school clubs in the competition.

"I just wanted to follow my sisters’ footsteps and experience it for myself as well," she says.

A longtime attendee of the fair who says she has missed only one that she can remember, Shortes looks forward to the opportunity to speak in front of others, which she said would be a "good experience". 

Shortes (L) attended the school's
trip to Germany this spring
Shortes' experience at school includes basketball, German club -- she attended the school's trip there this spring -- Interact, and Heroes. She works at Dutch Wonderland. After high school, she plans to study accounting.

In regards to what it would mean to be named the Fair Queen, she said, "It would mean a lot because then I would be able to spread togetherness of our community, and we are a very close community, and I think that’s amazing. [I would love to be] to be more active in our community and to see what goes on behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t see."

--Benjamin Pontz, LSNews.org Editor-In-Chief

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