Nov. 29—MOSES LAKE — Young women from Grant County are invited to participate in the Miss East Cascades scholarship program, the first step on the path to Miss America, said Deloma Sherwood, executive director of Miss East Cascades.
“We hold annual competitions at the local level and then hopefully have two to six to eight months to prepare our title holders to compete at Miss Washington probably in late June to early July,” she said. “And then whoever wins Miss Washington gets to go to Miss America and represent the state.”
Sherwood said Miss East Cascades is a local franchise of the Miss Washington program, one of 14 in the state. According to the Miss Washington website, there are three franchises for local areas in eastern Washington – in Yakima, Tri-Cities and Spokane – and Miss East Cascades covers Chelan, Douglas, Okanogan, Kittitas and Grant counties. It will be combined with the Miss Greater Wenatchee program, which was revived in 2023 after a 31-year hiatus, Sherwood said.
Any woman between the ages of 19 and 27 who lives, works or attends school in one of these counties is eligible, Sherwood said. As the “Miss” title suggests, contestants cannot be married, but starting this year, divorced women will be eligible if they have no dependents, she added.
This year’s competition will take place at Wenatchee High School on March 9, 2025, with mandatory rehearsals and private interviews with judges the day before, according to the Miss East Cascades website.
The private interviews are conducted with a panel of five to seven judges, Sherwood said, and the scores are collected in sealed, secret ballots and kept for the competition itself, which begins with a production number.
The first phase of the competition is an onstage conversation, Sherwood said, where each participant is asked a question about her platform, called a Community Service Initiative, or CSI. The participants then compete in a fitness and health competition. That fitness portion, Sherwood said, replaced the old swimsuit event that so many people associate with the pageant. Both Miss Washington and Miss America did away with the swimsuit competition in 2018, according to Miss Washington’s website.
“Since 1977, I have been pushing the state (franchises) and Miss America to get rid of the swimsuit (competition),” Sherwood said. “However, the job of a local or state grantee can be very demanding, so we thought there should be some form of eligibility (requirement) involved.”
The next phase is a 90-second talent presentation, followed by an evening gown walk. This is to demonstrate style, Sherwood explained; it’s not a beauty pageant.
“Miss America worked very hard (to get rid of that),” Sherwood said. ‘We understand that many people love the glamor of pageants. We take a dose of that, but the pillars of the Miss America program and the Miss East Cascades are service – and that is huge; we really push for service and being a leader in your country. community And then style, success and science are the other three pillars of the Miss America and Miss East Cascades program.
There are as many talents as participants. Music, dance and theater are popular, but contestants have shown off their talents by dribbling basketballs to music, painting quickly, conducting a science experiment and sewing a dress, according to the Miss East Cascades website. Likewise, CSIs are a wide open field and participants have many options, Sherwood said.
“Last year’s Miss East Cascades CSI was about the importance of training to know what to do in the event of a heart attack, how to do CPR,” Sherwood said. “Now she works as a nurse at (Columbia Valley Community Health).”
According to the Miss East Cascades website, the scholarships are not a fixed amount; the amount of money available depends on the donations and sponsorships in a given year and a participant does not have to be the winner to earn a significant scholarship amount.
“There are so many deserving young women who come from families who don’t qualify for additional scholarships because they make a little too much, but then don’t make enough to pay for their entire college education,” Sherwood said.
More information and registration forms can be found at www.misseastcascades.com.
