Sportsman’s Holiday Princess Zuri Van Cleave says she’s interested in helping others and she sees the festival court as a way to reach out in the community.
Van Cleave, 18, is one of eight young women who are candidates to be chosen Sportsman’s Holiday queen for the festival, to be held July 6-8. The queen will be crowned on July 5.
She is the daughter of Terri Van Cleave of Sweet Home. She has no brothers or sisters.
Van Cleave says she wants to get more involved in the community and she’s impressed by how people in Sweet Home come together to make things happen.
“I like how the community works as one in a crisis situation – such circumstances as house fires or deaths of a loved one,” she said. “How people show their love to others in such enabling times.”
Van Cleave is a senior at Sweet Home High School, and plans to attend college after graduation. After attending Linn-Benton Community College, she plans to attend a four-year school and eventually earn a master’s degree.
She wants to become a high school counselor “so that I can help troubled students believe in themselves,” she said. “I would like to reach others in a way that would eliminate suicide, depression and other destructive horrors to families.”
In high school, Van Cleave was a member of the state championship cheer squad this year and sang in the Concert Choir. She’s participated in basketball, volleyball, soccer, track and field and softball.
“I have always been in a sport my whole life,” she said.
She also danced for three years and enjoys horseback riding, bowling and kneeboarding. She worked at Sweet Home Lanes for a summer a couple of years ago.
She said she likes Sweet Home because it’s small enough that “everyone knows everyone.”
Van Cleave says she wants to change the image that some of the public may have of court members.
“I think I can help prove that not only pretty, preppy girls can do things like cheerleading or Sportsman’s Holiday Court,” she said.