Towns and cities name 2024 colleensDate: 3/5/2024 With the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade just around the corner, Reminder Publishing caught up with this year’s colleens from around the area to discuss their journey to become this year’s colleens and what they are looking forward to from the festivities.
Each year Agawam, Chicopee, Springfield, Westfield and West Springfield name a colleen and court, while Holyoke names a grand colleen with her court. Each city has different requirements to be named a colleen. This year’s winners are as follows: Elizabeth Katherine Gourde, grand colleen, Holyoke; Rachel Sills, Agawam; Kinamarie Ayala, Chicopee; Emma Feeley, Springfield; Sydney Drugan, Westfield; and Olivia Lyons, West Springfield.
Holyoke Grand Colleen Elizabeth Katherine Gourde
When Elizabeth Katherine Gourde was crowned Grand Colleen she was humbled by the honor and the attachment she now has with the legacy.
“There are so many colleens past and present that I look up to and that goes for girls both on my court and in other towns. To have anyone, especially a full panel of judges, feel that I can hold a candle to their legacy and impact in my life and in the lives of others is extremely touching,” Gourde said. “I’m feeling a touch of unworthy, but very grateful nonetheless.”
A proud resident of Holyoke, Gourde said while growing up with her parents and three brothers they lived in three different houses all on the same street. Her Irish roots come from her mother’s side, with ancestors from the counties of Sligo and Cork.
Gourde graduated from College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee in 2023 and throughout her college career was the co-editor in chief and writer for BLOOM Literary Magazine. She also pioneered a two-week Poetry and Prose writing workshop at the Care Center and worked with Sister Jane Morrissey at Homework House, both in Holyoke.
Beyond career and school, Gourde has been committed to service as in January 2023 she volunteered to rebuild homes with the Saint Bernard Project in Puerto Rico. In March of the same year, she traveled to El Paso, Texas, for a service trip where she cooked and cleaned in a refugee shelter and gained firsthand experience of the U.S. border.
Gourde is applying to Boston University with the goal of earning a master of arts degree in either prose or poetry. Her long-term dreams include working for a publishing company of in the film industry, recognizing storytelling as an essential part of her identity.
“I take such pride in getting to share people’s stories and so like every opportunity to find a new one and get to promote it for people is so important to me,” Gourde said.
Ultimately, she envisions receiving her doctorate and fulfilling her passion for literature and education as an English professor.
Gourde said she has gained motivation to use the honor as a way to create a legacy and inspire the community.
“I want for my girls and I to be a very vocal group. I want us to be more proactive than colleens have had the opportunity to be in years past and I really hope for us to have a legacy,” Gourde said. “It’s hard because St. Patrick’s Day will come and go each year, but how much can we jam into these next couple weeks to help us be remembered as the ones who made a difference and started a new path of a very active group of young Irish woman that inspire change in others.”
Agawam Colleen Rachel Sills
Rachel Sills, the colleen representing Agawam, said that becoming colleen was something she thought about achieving during her formative years.
“I definitely thought about it throughout middle school and high school whenever I would go to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and see the colleens up there,” Sills said.
She said she was planning on pursuing the position of colleen her junior and senior year of high school, but COVID-19 canceled the festivities.
Once colleen was offered again, Sills made sure to jump right in.
“I was super excited knowing all the events and community activities were coming up again,” she added.
Sills is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in education with a minor in mathematics at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. She is the captain of the school’s cheerleading team and a member of the education club at the university. She also works as a licensed substitute teacher and a camp counselor.
In June 2020, she received the Girl Scout Gold Award for her volunteer work.
“I grew up going to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, so knowing I get to do the colleen traditions and events means a lot to me,” Sills told Reminder Publishing.
When asked about what she is most excited about in the upcoming St. Patrick’s season, Sills said she cannot wait to meet new people.
“Getting to hang out with the Irish community throughout the month of March and beyond is super exciting to me,” Sills said.
Chicopee Colleen Kinamarie Ayala
Ayala Kinamari will represent Chicopee as its colleen at this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.
She is currently 17 years old and attends Chicopee Comprehensive High School.
Ayala talked about what made her want to run for colleen.
She said, “It was the fact that I wanted to be able to do something for myself. Slowly as I started doing more and more research on it and attending the events before the ball, I realized that it was much more of a fuller commitment than I realized and as time went on, I found myself wanting to represent my community more and more.”
Ayala said she also wanted to be able to represent Puerto Rico.
“I wanted to also represent my people. My ethnicity being Puerto Rican, sometimes as a minority thing do not go our way so being the colleen now is such a big deal for me because I have all my people in Puerto Rico celebrating my win and that is really want, I wanted to see,” Ayala said.
Although she is not Irish, Ayala added that she wants to become accustomed to the heritage and think she will do that be all the upcoming events she is about to attend.
She said, “My intentions were never to soil any traditions or celebrations because I am embracing Irish heritage and tradition. I attended an event to lean Irish dancing and it was amazing. Being the colleen is to represent my community and that is what I joined for.”
The Chicopee St. Patrick’s Parade Committee named their Colleen on Feb. 24 and Ayala said she couldn’t believe her name was called.
She said, “My heart stopped. I couldn’t believe it. My hear was racing before I even got picked so when I heard my name, my heart dropped, and I immediately hugged my friend and I cried into her arms. I was feeling so honored, and it was anything and everything I could have ever asked for.”
With the parade taking place on March 17, Ayala said she is honored and can’t wait.
“It’s something I always dreamed of watching the parade as a young girl and just wanted to be those girls up there on the float. I believe that I am going to give everybody my best emotions, my best smile because really this is the biggest moment of my life.
Springfield Colleen Emma Feeley
Emma Feeley is 20 years old and was born in Springfield which is what inspired her to run for colleen.
“I was born and raised in Springfield, so I’ve grown up going to the Holyoke parade, so I’ve seen [past colleens] on the float and always want to do it since I was little and just being able to have that pride and joy that I have in my heritage is definitely why I chose to do it.”
She is a junior nursing student at Sacred Heart University.
Feeley said she enjoyed the process of running to be the next colleen and looks forward to sharing the experience with her court.
“It was so fun. My court is a fantastic group of women. I absolutely love them. We are going to have a great season. Even just meeting people along the way through the process at the preliminary and then the finals, it’s been a really awesome process.”
Feeley also talked about the moment she heard her name get called as the next colleen for Springfield.
“It was a little surreal. I don’t think it really hit me until after because it was just, ‘oh Emma Feeley is the colleen.’ It was definitely a tough competition, we all have such expensive resumes, we are all so busy and we are all very qualified women and I think it was definitely a toss up to see who would win so I was really excited when I heard my name called.”
Feeley is Irish from both her parents and has been a championship level competitive Irish dancer for the last 10 years at the regional and national level.
“I think that is one of the biggest ways I incorporate that into my everyday life and it’s really what got me more interested in taking part in my Irish heritage,” Feeley said.
She added, “Part of the reason I wanted to do it is to show how much I enjoy being Irish and I think its also about being a role model to younger women in the Irish American community and just being able to represent that. It’s a big deal to be the colleen and a lot of eyes are on you, so I think being a role model is a huge part of being the Springfield colleen.”
Westfield Colleen Sydney Drugan
Westfield Colleen Sydney Drugan told Reminder Publishing she was in pure shock after hearing her name called as winner. Leading up to the moment, she was reflecting on the opportunity and her fellow contestants.
“There were so many amazing other contestants that it really could have been any of us,” Drugan said.
While it is a contest with a winner, Drugan added many don’t see the process firsthand and how it brings together young women in the community and there is more to gain from the experience win or lose.
“It’s kind of like a joining together of a lot of the young people in the community. A few of the contestants that competed in my pageant specifically, I didn’t even know that they had Irish heritage, so it was kind of a different experience for all of us getting to know each other a little bit better,” Drugan said. “Even the people that I’ve been going to school with for years. I had no idea that we had such a thing in common so it’s really nice to get to know people on a deeper level.”
Drugan is a junior at Westfield High School and serves on the Student Council Executive Board and was Student Council class president during her freshman and sophomore years at school before now serving as Class Historian.
She is a member of the National Honor Society and last year Drugan was a Mass Stem Week Challenge Winner chosen out of 5,000 participants, awarding her schools engineering program with a $10,000 scholarship.
Drugan serves as a member to multiple clubs as school such as Multicultural Club, Debate Club, Conservation Club, Space and Astronomy Club, and more. She also serves as a member of the Massachusetts Science and Engineer Fair Advisory Committee and was part of the One8 Foundation Student Board.
Outside of school, Drugan has been a competitive dancer for the past 16 years with her favorite style to perform being contortion. In her free time, she
enjoys reading about geology, peer mentoring and assistant teaching at dance classes.
Drugan plans on attending a technical school to further her education in engineering and she would like to study Volcanology and Geological Engineering. She added she has already started reaching out to colleges to learn more about how to get started in the career.
“I want to go into a specialized geology field which is a very small community but if you know the right people then you’re going to set yourself up really good for the future,” Drugan said. “I’m a very community-based person.”
Drugan reflected on growing up around the St. Patrick’s celebration with her family and on parade weekends and said it was always great for her seeing the colleens as a younger child both in Westfield on Parade Day.
“I’ve gotten to see a lot of our past colleens and even just seeing them I’ve always looked up to them because it’s such a great honor,” Drugan said. “Being in that group of amazing women and being able to carry on that legacy is something that truly is a great honor.”
West Springfield Colleen Olivia Lyons
West Springfield Colleen Olivia Lyons, a 17-year-old senior at West Springfield High School who was born a day shy of St. Patrick’s Day, said attending the parade with her paternal grandfather, who she refers to as “Papa,” is a core childhood memory of hers. Her grandfather always said she would be the colleen.
“He always told me that I would be colleen one day,” she said. “Now that I am colleen, it feels like a completion.”
Lyons, whose paternal great-grandparents come from County Mayo in Ireland, has plenty of volunteer experience in the area, including organizing can and bottle drives for the high school’s Irish Club and her tennis team, as well as fostering cultural exchange as she accompanied the mayor of County Kerry and children from Ireland on a tour of the high school. Lyons also works for King Gray Coachlines and serves as a camp counselor for the West Springfield Parks and Recreation Deaortment, and is also an American Red Cross-certified lifeguard.
While she had not decided on her choice of higher education, Lyons told Reminder Publishing she is leaning toward Merrimack and is looking to become a physician’s assistant.
“I do really well on adrenaline, so I thought the medical field would be a good fit for me,” she said. “Physician’s assistant was the perfect balance.”
When discussing being named the colleen Lyons gave some advice for anyone who wants to do the same.
“As long as you believe in yourself, anything is possible,” she said.
Reminder Publishing correspondent Rich J. Wirth contributed to this report.
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