Senior A.J. Freund received the honor of becoming the next Mr. Oswego on Tuesday, Sept. 24. Mr. Oswego is a pageant for senior boys at Oswego High School, which is a decades-long homecoming week tradition. It mainly consists of the participants showing off their outfits, personalities, and talents in order to win the title of Mr. Oswego.
“I’m just really happy that I can represent this school and the city of Oswego,” Freund said. “It’s a proud moment in my life to be considered Mr. Oswego.”
For Freund’s talent portion, he chose to sing “Your Man” by Josh Turner.
“I sang at a karaoke night one time, and my rendition went pretty well,” Freund said. “I thought it would be funny I thought I could get the crowd into it, so I just went with it.”
Singing was a popular choice for the talent portion. Contestants Tristan Ramos, Mark Melton, and Praise Oranika all sang varying showtunes, with Oranika singing “She Used To Be Mine” from the musical “Waitress.”
“One of my friends did it, like two years ago,” Oranika said. “She did it, like, amazingly, and ever since then I really liked the song.”
Some of the contestants tried to vary up the talent portion besides singing. Darren Manke read Dr. Suess’ “Wocket in My Pocket” to the tune of Migos’ “Walk it Talk it,” and Tyler Sendra read “Are You My Mother” by P.D Eastman with “Passion and Nuance.”
“I chose to read a book because I thought that I could try to diversify the talent pool a little bit,” Sendra said. “I also thought that it’d be a little bit unorthodox, but it might catch people off-guard enough to the point where’d it’d be surprisingly good.”
In the end, it was Freund that won the night. When asked why he won, he simply referred to his answer in the question and answer portion of the night.
“Look at me,” Freund said. “I’m your man.”
