Pageant Dreams
Local Young Women Journey to City
to Compete in Miss Utah Pageant

Josie Luke

Being from small towns, three local young women had an invaluable experience competing in the Miss Utah Scholarship pageant this past week in Salt Lake City. Fifty unique young women from all across the state gathered at the Capitol Theatre to compete in the pageant held June 26-29.
All three were very nervous when they first arrived for rehearsals. Miss Emery County, Kristine Johansen described her first impressions, “You get up here and there are all these girls. I’m just a little girl from Emery County and so you can kind of get down a bit, but by the end you have to pull yourself out of it and say, ‘I’m good at what I do.’” She revealed that most of the contestants had coaches for each part of the competition, and this made her feel a bit at a disadvantage.
The other two local contestants, Miss Carbon County Danielle Olsen and Miss Heritage Days Chelsea Killian agreed. Olsen even joked about the difference in fashion, “When we dress up, it’s like them dressing down.” They all expressed how glad they were to know each other before they went, so they could have a familiar face.
Olsen expressed what they had learned clearly, “I think being up here makes you learn a lot about yourself because when you’re performing, you’re out on stage and everything has to come from inside you at that point. All of the energy, all of your confidence, shows through your eyes. It’s only you that’s on stage. You find who you are and then you be the best person you can be.”
They all discussed what the most frightening part of the pageant was for them. For Killian, it was the on stage question, “you can practice questions and more questions, but they’re never going to ask you what you practiced.”
Johansen agreed, “You can’t prepare for it that much. You can prepare how to articulate everything, but when they ask you the question you don’t know what it is going to be.”
Olsen said, “It’s just a fear of the unknown. You can practice talent over and over again, but you have one chance and anything can happen. It’s a gamble, you do your best and whatever happens, happens.”
On the other hand, they also had something they considered the most fun for them. For Olsen, that was getting to know all of the other contestants. She said that she learned that they all had to feed off of each other. “You are forced to feed off each other and to look to each other for help,” she said. “You get to know each girl’s inner girl, not just the beautiful pageant girl.”
Johansen really enjoyed the production number that all of the contestants performed at the beginning of each night of competition. She said, “With all the girls together, you go out there and dance and have fun. All the girls are dressed up and the energy level is high. Killian said she just enjoyed the entire experience and all that she had learned.
The three also told of their favorite parts of the pageant. Johansen loved the talent portion of the competition, “with talent, it’s something that you love, it’s your own that you’ve been doing for a while. That’s why you love talent; it’s something that’s mine.
At first, none of them felt they had done their best on their talent, but after thinking about it, Johansen continued, “I think under the circumstances what we think is OK is probably amazing, because you are in front of so many people. You’re by yourself on stage and you want to pull off that one performance that totally rocks.”
Killian enjoyed her opportunity to perform. She said that when she first competed in Huntington she was very nervous in front of the small crowd, but she said in Salt Lake, “I wasn’t nervous at all. I really felt good. It was the best I had sang my song in three weeks. I was so relieved.”
Olsen appreciated the support from the audience and judges. “When you’re up there on stage you can almost feel the love from the audience and feel the love from the judges. They’re human and if you mess up, they love you anyway,” she said.
Family was a big support to the contestants. Johansen spoke of how grateful she was to know that her twin sister was in the crowd cheering her on, “It has been so hard for me to adjust. I’m used to having her by my side all the time, and so I’m like, ‘where is she, I need her’, but at night I know where she’s sitting, and to come and see a face that’s cheering for you, that really wants the best for you helping you through, just that one person in the audience. I don’t care if there was anyone else out there if I could just see that one face. That just gives me everything.”