38th Pride Of Hoyt Days event set to take over city park

Hoyt City Park will be a hub of community activity on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 23 and 24, as the 38th-annual Pride of Hoyt Days fills the park with a wide variety of activities, food, music and a parade.

“There’s a lot going on from dawn to dusk,” said Kim Clements of the Pride of Hoyt Days committee. “We try to make as much of it free as possible, especially the kids’ activities — the inflatables, the petting zoo, the rock-climbing wall and the punt, pass and kick event.”

Larry and Marceta Reilly will be the grand marshals for this year’s parade, which will take off from the Royal Valley High School parking lot at 4 p.m. and work its way down Highland Avenue to the city park. The Reillys have been Hoyt residents since 1968, and Marceta Reilly is best known to Hoyt residents as a teacher, principal and superintendent in the Royal Valley district.

“Marceta was really involved in education,” Clements said. “They had children in the Royal Valley district, and they were both involved in 4-H. They’ve been very involved in our community, and they donate to Pride of Hoyt every year.”

This year’s activities will be familiar to those who have taken part in the annual festival in previous years, including the parade, a car show, cornhole, sand volleyball and softball tournaments, an art show and quilt display, various games for kids, several food vendors and the event’s annual fried chicken dinner and community church service at the Hoyt Community Building, located inside the park.

The vast majority of activities, as Clements noted, are free of charge, meaning all that anyone who’s interested in taking part in some events has to do is “just show up.” That includes the 5K “color run,” with registration starting at 7 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 23 at the Hoyt Community Building with the run starting at 7:30 a.m., and participants are encouraged to wear a white T-shirt and old clothes.

For more on this and other stories, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account and select “Aug. 13, 2025” under “E-Editions.”