National Cherry Queen Visits Rose Bowl in Pasadena

The National Cherry Queen is taking her love for cherries on the road to the Rose Bowl!

The big game is Monday night, but Queen Olivia Coolman is taking in all the other sights of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl. That includes the Tournament of Roses Parade Monday morning.

Coolman says she was able to help decorate a couple of floats for this year’s parade, which is definitely a highlight of her trip. “On Friday and Saturday we helped decorate some floats in the parade. So I was able to put one yellow rose on the Mansion float, if you saw that. And we helped glue on some pinecones on the Burbank float.”

She’s also getting to talk about northern Michigan and the cherry industry. “They are just so kind and so welcoming. We’ve been giving out cherry treats and cherry pins. We’ve actually run into a couple of people from Traverse City just at random restaurants. And then all of our cherry pins, people are so excited to get them and then they also know Traverse City and they know we’re the Cherry Capital.”

The first ever Rose Bowl game was played in 1902. It was a shutout, Stanford lost 49-0 to the Michigan Wolverines! According to , it was originally titled the “Tournament East–West football game.”

What is now known as the Rose Bowl Game was first played on January 1, 1902, at Tournament Park in Pasadena, California, starting the tradition of New Year’s Day bowl games.

The inaugural game featured Head Fielding H. Yost’s dominating 1901 Michigan Wolverines football team, representing the East, who crushed a 3–1–2 team from Stanford University, representing the West, by a score of 49–0 after Stanford captain Ralph Fisher requested to quit with eight minutes remaining.

Michigan finished the season 11–0 and was considered a national champion. Yost had been Stanford’s coach the previous year. You can learn more about Michigan’s first Rose Bowl game .

Michigan’s last bowl game appearance was this weekend’s loss to TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. Before that, it was a loss to Georgia in the Orange Bowl on December 31, 2021.

You can follow the National Cherry Queen’s travels on the Facebook page .