Local women to compete for Miss Missouri crown

This year, three local women will join the ranks of teen and youth champions from across the state competing for the Miss Missouri crown.

Jefferson City’s Katie Farr and Eldon natives Holly Inowski and Christina Beard will join the rest of the team at the Missouri Military Academy campus in Mexico, Missouri for Contest Week.

Qualifiers for Miss and Teen contestants will be held on June 14th and 15th at 7pm. The Teen Finals will be held on June 16th at 7pm, where the new Miss Missouri Teen will be announced. The week ends with the election of a new Miss Missouri on June 17th at 7pm.

Twenty-five Missouri natives go through a series of interviews and performances to prove their talent, fitness and more.

Miss Springfield Route 66 Katie Farr of Jefferson City has been competing for a year and a half since a family friend told her she should try it.

Farr currently attends Missouri State University, majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Marketing.

She will sing “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” at Thursday night’s talent performance.

Farr’s initiative, Altogether Beautiful, is a platform that spreads awareness of eating disorders through education and fundraising. Farr will discuss her own journey with an eating disorder in an interview.

“That’s kind of why I decided to advocate for eating disorders within this organization because I’ve struggled with eating disorders in the past and so many people have had an eating disorder. I have an eating disorder and I know they do it in silence,” said Farr.

Farr said eating disorders have been on the rise in recent years, partly because of the pandemic and social media. She believes that if she were elected Miss Missouri, she would want to raise her profile even more.

Miss Kansas International Christina Beard is from Eldon and graduated from the music program at Drury University. Beard now runs her own music business and she not only sings but plays many instruments including fiddle, flute, piccolo, piano and guitar.

“I’m a multi-instrumentalist musician, so it’s really nice to be able to play, and that’s what originally got me into the Miss America and Missouri organization,” Beard said.

The Miss Missouri organization offers Beard an opportunity, hoping it will lead to her career goal of performing for Branson.

In the talent section of the competition, she will perform a medley of fiddles she has arranged and composed herself.

Beard’s work is “Autism through a new lens”. The impetus for her to choose this organization comes from her perspective of growing up with her brother who had autism.

“So my mission is to create a culture of understanding, acceptance and inclusion, hopefully breaking some myths out of the stereotypes that have been made about autism,” Beard said.

For Miss Branson and Holly Inowski from Eldon, the inspiration for choosing “Hungry for Change” as their initiative was a backpack full of food on the school bus. It was a junior high school memory of witnessing a friend being bullied. weekend.

“That was my first realization of how real hunger was,” Inowski said.

“But especially having grown up on a farm, I understood the importance of having the right or available food, so it was very important to me that children, teachers and individuals didn’t feel that way. ‘ added. This is what my bus mates felt when I was a junior high school student. “

Inowski’s love of contests began when she was just 12 years old when she competed in the Miss Miller County Teen pageant.

“I always looked up to women who competed in Miss America. I wanted a model, and that’s why I’ve continued to participate, and now I do.”I’m going into my sixth year and this time I’m going to be Miss Branson,” Inowski said.

Inowski grew up in Eldon and then attended the University of Missouri. In the talent division of the competition, Inofsky will play the marimba, an instrument he’s loved playing since fifth grade.

If you would like to attend the pageant, you can purchase tickets by calling the Mexican Regional Chamber of Commerce at 573-581-2765.