At the National American Miss competition for Florida, Faith Behanna, 15, was crowned Miss Florida for her age group. This November, she will compete in the national competition in Anaheim, Calif.
Behanna is a sophomore at Strawberry Crest High School. She started entering local Plant City pageants when she was 9, but, since then, she has moved on to bigger competitions, and now she will proceed to the national event.
“When I was in about fourth grade, a lot of my friends were competing in pageants. They were telling me that you get to dress up and get crowned, so of course, little fourth-grade me wanted to become a princess,” Behanna said.
But now her motivation has changed.
“It’s definitely a great way to increase my leadership skills and all of the skills I’m going to need to secure a career one day,” she said.
National American Miss is a pageant system that starts at the state level. Competitors must submit an application and be accepted into the pageant. At the state event, Behanna was in the Junior Teen Division 2, which was for 13- to 15-year-olds.
Behanna was the only competitor from Strawberry Crest, but National American Miss accepts recommendations from its queens for future applicants. Behanna said she recommended some of her friends from school and hopes to see them at pageants in later years.
Girls in National American Miss pageants are judged in three on-stage categories: formal wear, personal introduction and interview. They also are judged on community involvement.
For the formal wear event, Behanna’s boyfriend, Gio Rapati, escorted her. Rapati is a junior at Strawberry Crest, and Behanna hopes he will be able to escort her at the national competition, as well.
During their personal introductions, competitors are required to state their ambitions for the future. Behanna’s set of goals was as dazzling as her crown.
“My ambition is to attend the University of Florida, where I’ll major in agricultural education and minor in business, as well as attending cosmetology school, because I hope to open my own salon one day as well as become a high school FFA adviser,” she said.
Behanna is active in the FFA at Strawberry Crest.
“What I really enjoy with the FFA is the public speaking aspect,” Behanna said. “I also really have come to enjoy floriculture.”
She has competed in floriculture at the state level for FFA twice.
The interview portion of the event tested the girls’ overall appearance and communication skills.
To receive points for community involvement, which was worth 10% of the overall score, the girls had to donate school supplies during pageant weekend. National American Miss distributed the supplies to schools in the counties surrounding the competition location. The pageant raised more than 5,000 school supply items to distribute among Central Florida schools, including those in Hillsborough County.
Behanna said it was hard to believe that she had earned the title of Miss Florida.
“After all of the long hours of hard work that I had put in to prepare, all of the hours shopping and altering dresses … I was just really glad it paid off,” Behanna said.
Behanna was crowned Miss Florida Aug. 4. It was also the date of her mother’s birthday. Behanna chose to give her $1,000 prize to her mother, Brenda Combs, as a birthday gift.
“I was actually kind of opposed to her being in pageants for a long time, because I think everyone should take pride in their appearance and take care of themselves, but I think your endeavors should be more than superficial,” Combs said. “But this pageant system — they teach the girls to be civic-minded. … That’s why I gave her my blessing to go ahead and do it.”
Combs said her advice for other pageant moms was to research the background of any pageants their daughters are considering. She said it was important to find a competition that judged girls based on more than just physical appearance.
Along with the prize money, Behanna received a queen’s bouquet, crown, trophy, banner and two VIP tickets to Disneyland, which she will use the week of the national competition. She also won $250 in the optional spokesmodel competition.
Behanna will compete in the national competition Nov. 22 to 28. Portions of the event will be streamed live on National American Miss’ website, namiss.com.
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.