| LIVING TODAY | HOME | ARCHIVES | COLUMNS |
Morgan County Junior Miss By Patrice Stewart
Dorothy will be there Saturday, along with the lion, tin man and scarecrow. You can follow the Yellow Brick Road, too, and watch 20 seniors from four area high schools compete for the title of Morgan County Junior Miss, as well as scholarship money. The program, which will begin at 7 p.m. in the Decatur High School auditorium, will include talent, self-expression and physical fitness divisions. “Defying Gravity” is the theme for the program, which will feature songs from Broadway musicals “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Wiz” and “Wicked.” Mary Catherine McAnnally, the current Alabama and Morgan County Junior Miss, will be dressed as Dorothy in the opening scene. Tonya Jones, who is choreographing the show for the fifth year, said the opening number, from “Wicked,” is “One Short Day in the Emerald City,” featuring McAnnally and the 20 participants. “Our fitness number is ‘Ease on Down the Road’ from ‘The Wiz,’ and the self-expression number is ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ from the ‘Wizard of Oz,’ ” Jones said. The finale will feature McAnnally in “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked.” The 20 contestants will be divided into two groups for the fitness and self-expression divisions, Jones said. In fitness, the “Yellow Brick Road” group will wear yellow T-shirts, while the Emerald City group will wear green ones. The young women will be rated in judges’ interviews and academics earlier that day. Last year, only 13 competed for the county title, but this year many more seniors showed interest. Is that because McAnnally went on to take the state title in January and many honors at the national competition in June? “I don’t think I can take the credit for that,” said McAnnally. “But if I have helped raise awareness about the Junior Miss program, then I’m glad, because it’s such a fantastic program. I’m a huge Junior Miss nerd now.” McAnnally will entertain Saturday and place the medallion around the winner’s neck at the end of the evening. Then she can look forward to doing the same in January for the next Alabama Junior Miss. “I don’t have to be a has-been quite yet,” said the 2007 Decatur High School graduate who is now a freshman at Birmingham-Southern College. Her advice to those competing is simply to relax and enjoy the experience. “I went in expecting nothing, so winning was a pleasant surprise and icing on the cake,” she said. “They should just enjoy it, because you’ll never have another ride quite like Junior Miss.” Along with making public appearances to promote Junior Miss, she sang at events and judged the statewide Miss Nursing Home pageant. The daughter of Sid and April McAnnally used her vocal number, “For Good” from the Broadway musical “Wicked,” to wow the judges, along with her experiences as a delegate to a World Youth Leadership Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. She received $26,000 in cash scholarships plus a four-year scholarship to Birmingham-Southern while participating in the county, state and national Junior Miss programs, said John Vaughan, Morgan County Junior Miss chairman. The Morgan County program has awarded $35,350 in cash scholarships since he helped reactivate it in 2001, he said. The experience of his daughter, Ellen Vaughan, was a big reason. She went to Birmingham to enter the 1999 at-large program there because Morgan County did not have a competition. She almost decided to head to a mall with her friends instead of going to Birmingham, he said. But she was glad later she had decided to try the Junior Miss program, because she enjoyed representing Morgan County for a year. The chairman said it’s a struggle to get the word out about the program every year, and some girls are intimidated by the talent portion. Only eight entered in 2001, in contrast to the 20 this year (and more than that indicated interest in August). “It’s always frustrating when more girls don’t do it, but it’s a growing program,” he said, “and a lot of that is based on the scholarship program.” “We have an entertaining group of girls this year,” he said. More than 700,000 young women have participated since America’s Junior Miss program was founded in 1958. Its headquarters are in Mobile. Tickets Tickets are $5 or $10, available from participants or by calling director John Vaughan at 350-7024.
Subscribe today for only 38 cents a day! |
|
Leave feedback on this or another story. |
|
|
201 1st Ave. SE
P.O. Box 2213
Decatur, Ala. 35609
(256) 353-4612
webmaster@decaturdaily.com