Saturday's Miss Iowa Pageant is a mother-daughter event for one Muscatine family
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Miss Muscatine, Kaylee Jones, doesn’t have to go far to find someone who knows exactly how she’s feeling as she competes at the Miss Iowa pageant this week.
She only needs to look over at her mom, Kim Sywassink.
Sywassink competed in the Miss Iowa Pageant as Miss Muscatine, a short 24 years ago, as Kimberly Dawn Kopf.
Mother and daughter are excited as they talk about the busy week leading up to Thursday’s and Friday’s preliminary rounds and Saturday’s finals, to be held at the Adler Theatre in Davenport.
During a recent interview at the family’s Muscatine home, they discussed their individual experiences and how the pageant has evolved since the 1990s.
Kaylee, who said she was in the Little Miss Muscatine contest “when I was 4 or 5” said her younger sister, Kendi Jones, challenged her to enter the Miss Muscatine pageant.
“She said she would enter the Outstanding Teen contest if I entered Miss Muscatine,” Kaylee said.
Kendi finished first-runner up for Outstanding Teen, winning the talent portion of the competition.
Kaylee was crowned Miss Muscatine on Jan. 9, 2016.
She characterized her time as Miss Muscatine as “very welcoming.”
“It’s nice to know I can be a leader,” she said. “Younger girls have come up to me. I can teach them in a positive way.”
Kaylee, a senior at Quincy University, has chosen as her platform, “The Blue Zones project – Live life to the Fittest.”
The Blue Zones project is a reference to the national health initiative to improve the well-being of communities through programs designed to make healthy choices easier. Muscatine is a Blue Zones community.
Fitness and a healthy lifestyle are important for Kaylee, who is a second baseman for the Hawks softball team. She is majoring in sports management and exercise science.
She hopes one day to work for a collegiate or professional sports team.
“I don’t want a job where I’m sitting at my desk,” she said.
Kim, a special education teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in Muscatine, glances proudly at her daughter as she speaks of the journey that led her to this week’s competition.
“Just seeing her take this on … she’s had four months to prepare while going to school full-time and playing softball. She’s gotten this all together on her own,” Kim said. “I’m really proud of her and how organized she is.”
Kaylee looks over at her mom. “You’re making me cry,” she says.
It’s a busy week for contestants in the Miss Iowa and Miss Iowa Outstanding Teen competition as they make numerous appearances in the Davenport area, perform service projects and attend rehearsals. Kim said she doesn’t remember it being quite this busy in 1992.
Her mom entered her into the Miss Muscatine competition, she recalled.
“She said it would be something good for me to do,” she said. “I wasn’t in pageants growing up.”
At the time, the education major was a senior at the University of Iowa and doing her student teaching in Hills, Iowa. Funds provided through the Miss Muscatine Scholarship Program were much appreciated, she said.
Near the end of her reign as Miss Muscatine, Kim was thrown off a horse and broke her arm. A subsequent infection landed her at University Hospitals in Iowa City for several months. She had to get the permission of her doctors to leave the hospital and return to Muscatine to crown her successor.
“I was so weak and couldn’t stand so they had to get me a chair,” Sywassink said.
http://qctimes.com/news/local/muscatine/saturday-s-miss-iowa-pageant-is-a-mother-daughter-event/article_94bc8fd8-2569-531e-8beb-ae5d5be085cd.html
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário