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2008 Teen America's Junior Miss Lindsey Brinton Jun. 28, 2008 Click here for pictures of the event!
America's Junior Miss 2008 is being held in Mobile, Alabama. It will be held June 26-28, 2008. America's Junior Miss 2007 Nora Ali will be on hand to drape the traditional medal around the neck of the new winner. Final Results Salt Lake City's Junior Miss, Lindsey Brinton, garnered the title of America's Junior Miss 2008 at the organization's national competition in Mobile, Alabama. In winning the competition Brinton received a total of $54,000 in scholarship money. Brinton, a graduate of West High School, will attend Harvard University in the fall to study Biochemical Engineering. She was a recent State of Utah Sterling Scholar in Music. For her talent Brinton performed a classical piano piece, "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6" by Franz Liszt. She is the daughter of Gregory and Sally Brinton. The First Runner-up was North Carolina’s Junior Miss Helen Ching. She received $25,000 in college scholarship money for this honor. She also won an award during the preliminary competition in talent. In all, Helen Ching received $26,000 in cash scholarships. The Second Runner-up was California’s Junior Miss Jacqueline Rotman. She received $17,000 in college scholarship money for this honor. She won an award during the preliminary competition in scholastics. She also won scholarships for the Be Your Best Self Essay Award and the Wintzell’s Oyster House My Town Award. In all, Jacqueline Rotman received $20,000 in cash scholarships. Five other contestants were named finalists, each earning a $5,000 scholarship. They were: Nanxi Liu of Colorado, Kaileigh Bullard of Oklahoma, Marianna Breland of Mississippi, Lauren Gessner of Ohio, and Norma Boyd of Alabama. Boyd also won a $1,500 scholarship for the Spirit Award, which is voted on by all 50 contestants. Several other scholarships were awarded during preliminary competitions that took place late last week. document.writeln(AAMB6);var ACE_AR = {Site: '745295', Size: '300250'};Friday Prelim Results Utah's Junior Miss Lindsey Brinton snagged $4,000 in scholarships Friday night after completion of the preliminary competitions in the 51st America's Junior Miss contest. The top five contestants in each of the five categories were announced with each girl being awarded a $1,000 scholarship for each win. Brinton placed in the top five for talent, interview, scholastic and self-expression. Alabama's Norma Boyd, Ohio's Lauren Gessner and Virginia's Lily Voth each placed in the top five in two categories. The eight AJM finalists will be announced Saturday night, and they will compete again in the talent and fitness portions of the competition. The new America's Junior Miss will be announced that night at the Mobile Civic Center Theater. The evening provided some unplanned excitement for both the girls and the audience when the Civic Center Theater's fire alarm went off just before New Jersey's Junior Miss Amy Kao began playing a piano piece composed by her grandfather. Half the audience was outside before the all-clear was announced. It had been a false alarm. Oklahoma's Kaliegh Bullard and Utah's Brinton had the largest cheers of the night. Brinton's hands blurred as the flew across the piano keys as she performed a piece by Franz Liszt. Oklahoma's Bullard danced, sang and played the fiddle, She said she wanted to give the audience a taste of her home state. The five winners in the each of the following categories are listed in no particular order: Talent — North Carolina's Ching, Idaho's Hannah Yeats, Alaska's Johanna Soderlund, Oklahoma's Bullard and Utah's Brinton. Self expression — Louisiana's Lauren McCalmont, Alabama's NoBoyd, Virginia's Voth, Ohio's Gessner and Indiana's Anah Hewetson. Interview — Virginia's Voth, Texas' Alexis Keslinke, Utah's Brinton, Tennessee's Lawson and Oregon's Twila Tschan. Scholastic — Hawaii's Trina Hyun, California's Jackie Rotman, Nebraska's Madison Renzaei, Georgia's Laura Brett Harshbarger and Utah's Brinton. Fitness — Ohio's Gessner, Indiana's Hewetson, Alabama's Boyd, Utah's Brinton and Kansas' Jairrah Mansfield. Thursday Prelim Results California's Junior Miss Jacqueline Rotman walked away from the first night of preliminaries in the 51st annual America's Junior Miss competition with $2,000 in scholarships. In all, six contestants and one former Junior Miss were awarded scholarships on the opening night of competition. Rotman, who has founded a nonprofit organization to teach dance in her community, won the $1,000 Wintzell's My Town award for community service and a $1,000 award from the AJM Alumnae Council. ouisiana's Lauren McCalmont and Mississippi's Marianna Bre land also won $1,000 scholarships from the council for the Be Your Best Self essay contest. Tennessee's Chandler Lawson won the $1,500 award for community service from Bel Air Mall because of her history of volunteer service and extracurricular activities. Alabama's Norma Boyd was awarded $1,000 from Verizon after her photos of the AJM competition received the most online votes. Kansas' Jairrah Mansfield won $1,000 for the Press-Register's daily journal award for her entry about eating oysters. Iowa's 2007 Junior Miss Paige Ledger won the award for outstanding scholastic achievement by one of last year's contestants. On the first night of competition, two of the four groups of contestants competed in self-expression and fitness, and two groups competed in talent. In Friday night's preliminaries, the groups will flip-flop. The national finals will be Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Mobile Civic Center Theater. For the self-expression portion of the competition, one group had to answer the question of whether or not texting while driving should be a punishable offense. Most agreed that it should, and Maine's Molly Bouchard suggested that the ban on texting while driving should be global. A few, like Vermont's Junior Miss Celie Dagesse and South Carolina's Brooke Gibbons, admitted to having used their cell phones or having been distracted by other things while driving. "I have first hand experience that texting or even just changing the radio can be enough to make you drive off the road," Gibbons said. The contestants in another group spoke on whether or not schools should have dress codes for events. Many of them said they believe dress codes should be enforced. But California's Rotman said she disagreed. She told the audience and judges that she had pinned her shirt to her pants in middle school because she was so worried about showing her midriff, which was against the dress code. "Students should express themselves, and stifling them with strict dress codes is not the way to do that," Rotman said. During the talent competition, Alabama's Boyd got loud cheers from the hometown crowd for her lyrical dance to Martina McBride's "Anyway." Washington's Junior Miss Annie Wang won cheers and laughter from the crowd as she performed "The Hot Canary" by Paul Nero on her violin. Some in the audience giggled when the squeaking notes in the song made it sound as if a bird were onstage. Entertainment Not only will the audience of the 51st AJM National Finals be entertained with the talents of the 50 contestants, but the program is bringing back past AJM’s for entertainment as well. Shannon Essenpreis Fortney and Kelli Schutz Croyle, AJM 2004 and 2005 respectively, will be performing at this year’s preliminaries. Kelli will be entertaining the audience with a lyrical dance, and Shannon will be singing. Shannon Essenpreis Fortney graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in broadcast journalism and is currently the Directory of Marketing of Harbour Financial Group in Cincinnati. AJM will also feature the musical talents of Nora Ali, AJM 2007, and her sisters, Nicole and Leeza Ali. The sisters will perform together during the 51st AJM National Finals. A recent graduate from Harvard with honors in physics, Nicole Ali will begin pursuing an MD with a PhD in biomedical engineering at Yale University School of Medicine in the fall. Leeza is a student at South St. Paul High School in Minnesota and has been playing the piano since the age of nine. She has performed live with the St. Paul City Ballet and at New York’s Carnegie Hall for the national TV program “From the Top.” Changes Before competing in the national finals on June 28, the contestants will spend two weeks seeing the sights in Mobile, working with local community service organizations and preparing for the contest; $150,000 in scholarship money is up for grabs. But this year, the girls will not glide across the stage in floor-length gowns with long trains. Junior Miss spokeswoman Cassidy Grimes said the girls instead will wear cocktail dresses. "We're trying to get away from the pageant image," Grimes said. "A girl will wear a long dress only if she wears it during her talent." America's Junior Miss started as a local competition hosted by the Mobile Junior Chamber of Commerce. High school senior girls competed to be crowned queen of the Azalea Trail Maids. When organizers realized that girls from Mississippi and Florida were also competing, they opened it for high school girls from every state and renamed it the Junior Miss America Pageant in 1957. The competition was renamed America's Junior Miss in 1959. After the competition almost ended in 2005 due to a funding shortage, Becky Jo Peterson, Junior Miss executive director, said that the program has gone back to its roots. The competition has not been shown on television since 2005, and Peterson said there are no plan to return to TV. She said it was costing the organization $650,000 a year, and television networks have more interest in reality shows than in the competition. The competition posted low ratings when it aired in 2005, and America's Junior Miss could not attract a major television network willing to televise it for the next year. "Television just isn't interested in what we're doing right now," Peterson said. Organizers tried to make America's Junior Miss a reality show once, but she said that compromised the orga nization's values because of multiple takes and editing. Instead, Peterson said, America's Junior Miss has spent more money supporting local competitions rather than keeping funding at the top for the national finals. The most important thing is getting more girls involved, she said. About 5,000 girls compete in America's Junior Miss each year at the different levels, Peterson said. TO ADD OR UPDATE CONTENT TO TFTJ, use the Submission Forms.
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