Lake County crowns new queens
Submitted by Sue Staranowicz
The Lake County Community Pageant System held its 13th annual pageant recently and crowned three new queens. The new 2017 Miss Lake County is Zaryah Dixon of Zion; 2017 Junior Miss Lake County is Nahlia Tindal of Beach Park; and 2017 Little Miss Lake County is Dakota Cleaver of Ingleside.
Those named first runners-up in each category are Milan Tindal of Beach Park for Miss Lake County, Suhanee Patel of Lake Zurich for Junior Miss and Daija Hoard of Zion for Little Miss. Zaryah Dixon and Daija Hoard of Zion, Elizabeth Larsen of Beach Park, Aliyah Thibault of Fox Lake and Abigail Barkhurst of Volo were all recipients of the congeniality award.
This pageant focuses heavily on the communication and public speaking skills of the contestants. They participated in a timed interview with a panel of professional judges consisting of businesspeople, educators and state pageant experts. All the contestants were required to prepare a planned speech and also had to be spontaneous and respond to a pop question.
Some other highlights of the pageant were Kathleen Hunt, 2016 Miss Lake County, accepting her scholarship award of $1,000 which she is applying to her education at George Washington University, and monetary awards given to Junior Miss 2016, Abigail Hernandez and Little Miss 2016, Jordan Gaston for their excellent service to the community.
The program also promotes community service work throughout Lake County and the new 2017 queens began their reigns by delivering the toys collected from the contestants to the Marines for their Toys for Tots program. All of the town queens in the program will work together to make a difference in Lake County, attending events to support organizations like Haven House and PADS and working with the elderly.
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