By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON — The Miss Kansas pageant is coming up this week in Pratt.
"We have preliminary competitions Thursday, July 8, and Friday, July 9," said Stephanie Harris with the Miss Kansas organization. "The finals are on July 10. We don't have as many tickets as we normally do this year, so I encourage people to get on to misskansas.org. The link to our ticket purchasing site is right there. Also, we are going to live webcast preliminaries and finals, so if you can't make the drive to Pratt and want to watch it in the luxury of our own home, you may."
The qualifiers for the scholarship program come from all over the state.
"This is a unique year," Harris said. "These candidates have now held their titles for now two years due to the pandemic. In the fall of 2019, throughout that year and the winter of 2020, we had what we call local competitions and those are held in various communities across the state at different times of the year. The candidates go and they compete at those locals and when they win a local title, they advance on to the state competition in Pratt."
Contestants must be a high school graduate by the time of the state competition and between the ages of 17 and 25.
"The winner of the Miss Kansas competition will go on to compete for the title of Miss America," Harris said. "That will be held in December of this year in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun."
Miss America 1997, Tara Dawn Holland was the last Miss Kansas to go on to win the Miss America title.