Aggiette crowned Miss Utah Teen USA
Aggiette Savannah Lancaster was crowned Miss Utah Teen USA on Oct. 26 at the Val A. Browning Center for the Performing Arts in Ogden. Lancaster will go on to compete in the Miss Teen USA Pageant July 2014 in the Bahamas.
To become a contestant in the Miss Utah Teen USA Pageant, young women ages 14-18 send in an application. If they are accepted, they are sent a letter inviting them to compete. Contestants must be residents of Utah or full-time students for the fall semester and can never have been pregnant or married.
The application includes the contestant’s job, GPA, a little bit about them and why they think they would be a great titleholder.
The contestants of the Miss Utah Teen USA Pageant were judged in three categories; swimwear, to show a contestant’s physical fitness; evening gown, to display her poise, grace and professionalism; and a private interview. All 25 contestants competed in preliminary rounds in each of these categories and then the top semifinalists were chosen to continue on.
Each of these semifinalists competed in swimwear and evening gown in the next round, and the top five contestants were chosen to move on to the finals.
In the finals, each contestant answered an on-stage interview question, and the winner was chosen from among them and crowned.
Lancaster has competed in many pageants since she was in high school and has been very successful. She won her first title of Miss Drill while still in high school and went on to win Miss Drill Utah, Miss Drill USA and Miss Drill International.
“Some people approached me and told me, ‘You would be good at it,’ and just doing the smaller ones in high school just kind of brought me to this point, and they just brought a lot of opportunities that I never would have had if I didn’t do them; just a lot of open doors through pageants,” Lancaster said.
Lancaster was sponsored by the Miss Weber County Pageant to compete at the Miss Utah Pageant, a pageant in the Miss America circuit. She was the first runner-up to Miss Utah 2013 Ciera Pekarcik and was the preliminary talent competition winner.
After her success in the Miss America circuit, Lancaster decided to apply for the Miss Utah Teen USA Pageant, which is also part of the Miss USA circuit. Some of the biggest differences between these two circuits are that the Miss America pageants are scholarship pageants, while the Miss USA circuits are modeling pageants.
Lancaster believes all pageants are great opportunities for the girls who compete in them, opening doors and opportunities otherwise closed to these young women.
“My favorite part is definitely everything that happens behind the scenes,” she said. “I mean the pageant itself was great, the competition was great and fun but getting to know, you know, 50 other girls from around the state, making connections with people you go way back with, and it’s just kind of cool to get to know everybody. I got really close with a few girls, and it’s great still keeping in touch with them.”
As Miss Teen Utah USA, Lancaster will work closely with the dress company Cherry Hill and do a lot of modeling work and photo shoots. She will also volunteer with Best Friends Animal Society and Best Buddies, a program for disabled children.
Lancaster is a freshman in her first semester at USU and is majoring in human movement science with an emphasis in pre physical therapy.
– mled94@gmail.com