Katelyn Cummins, the new Rose of Tralee, is the role model our daughters need

Laois Rose Katelyn Cummins was crowned the 65th International Rose of Tralee on Tuesday night. She has beauty, she has grace and she has a job no other Rose has ever had before – she’s an apprentice electrician.

Hailing from the village of Ballyouskill, on the Laois-Kilkenny border, the 20-year-old new Rose of Tralee is in her third phase of training, and she also has plans to pursue an engineering degree.

Over the past few years, Roses have been equally praised and criticized for being being beautiful high-achievers. Yes, it was a tonic to the "lovely girls" reputation the festival had got and, of course, we should absolutely be celebrating these impressive women. But, they’re not always exactly relatable.

Katelyn Cummins is a worthy winner whose credentials have come at just the right time for many young women in the country. As the Leaving Cert results loom, and students consider their futures, it will be a breath of fresh air for many – girls and boys – to see a winner who hasn’t gone down what’s seen now as the traditional path.

She explained during her Rose of Tralee interview how she decided to embark on the electrical trade, saying, "Back when I was in Transition Year, I had to do work experience, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I didn’t really want to go to college; it didn’t really seem like a path for me. Then my dad put me in touch with a local electrician. I did a week’s work experience, and I absolutely loved it. I knew it was the job for me."

Katelyn admits that while she doesn’t look like your typical electrician, she fits right in! She said, "Some people say I don’t look like an electrician. I am very, very girly. I was the only girl in my college, and I am the only girl in my apprenticeship. I’m one of the lads now."

We think it’s brilliant to see a young woman to be so proud of her career path and we hope that it will encourage other young people to pursue what they want to do and avoid the status quo if it doesn’t suit them.

In a previous interview, Katelyn said that a woman going into a male-dominated trade isn’t something you hear about every day, but "you can still do it no matter what and I wasn’t treated any differently."

She hopes that people will hear about her path and consider training for a job that makes them happy, "no matter if it’s going to college, doing an apprenticeship, a PLC course, there’s something out there for everybody and it doesn’t have to be the traditional route of college."

Hear, hear, Katelyn!

In a sign of moving with the times, the 2025 Roses included four mothers, a smattering of tattooed roses, a hostage negotiator in training and careers as diverse as banking, teaching and criminology. 

* This article was originally published on Rollercoaster.ie.