“Hayley Michel,” boomed over the speakers. “Ms. Great Lakes Region.”

Stunned, Hayley Michel, junior, froze in her spot on the stage. She felt a nudge from the girl next to her, and suddenly she started moving forward.

“I walked up and was crowned and received a banner and flowers,” Michel said. “It’s a lot of pictures and smiling. I’ve never smiled so much in my life.”

This was Michel’s first beauty pageant and she won the title for Ms. Great Lakes Region and then the title for Ms. Missouri Teen, which qualified her to go to the national pageant in Orlando, Fla., over Thanksgiving break from Saturday, Nov. 21, to Sunday, Nov. 29.

“My cousin has been doing pageants for a year or two now, and she invited me to compete in one just for fun,” she said. “So, I won a title in my first pageant.”

The required aspects of the pageant included evening wear, on-stage introduction and individual interviews with judges. Then, there are several optional ones ranging from talent to more resume based competitions such as academic achievement and service.

For talent, Michel played a piece on the piano.

“I didn’t know how I would feel about it at first,” she said. “I didn’t know if the girls would be nice. I don’t really like public speaking but it wasn’t as nerve-wrecking as I thought and it was a lot of fun.”

In fact, Michel became friends with a lot of the girls there.

“All the girls were super helpful and nice,” she said. “It’s not all about trying to win, people want you to succeed.”

Michel met even more friends, but this time all over the nation when she went to the national competition in Disney. For a week, the girls attended appearances, dinners, trips to the park, rehearsals and then, competitions.

“None of us are very coordinated at dancing and we had to go to all of our rehearsals and we were all horrible at it and it took us so long to learn our dances,” she said. “That was just fun to commiserate about it with all the other girls because we were so bad.”

During a trip to Magic Kingdom, all the girls wore their sashes and crowns and what started off as just a photo with a Disney park employee ended up being an embarrassing memory of the trip for Michel.

“My friends and I had just walked in and this guy with a trolley wanted us to take a photo in front of it and then suddenly he got up in the center in front of the castle and announced us in front of everyone in the park,” she said. “It was embarrassing and unexpected.”

Out of the 57 girls around the nation in Michel’s 16-18 year old age division, Michel placed in the top 20 for the regular competition and top 10 for talent.

“The final night of the competition when you are getting called up for making certain cuts was nerve-wrecking, but I had the goal of making top 20 and I achieved it,” she said.
Now, Michel can’t wait to compete again.

“It was so crazy because there were so many people but it was a lot of fun and I met a lot of different people,” she said. “It was really exciting and I felt honored because it is something special not a lot of people get to do.”