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10/08/2022
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By Chris Starrs Staff Correspondent August 10, 2022
In the world of pageantry, Rebecca Zhang is riding a hot streak as she enters her final high-school-aged competition
Zhang, who this spring graduated from Chattahoochee High School, will travel to Texas, later this month to compete for the title of Miss America’s Outstanding Teen, a scholarship pageant considered the “little sister” to the Miss America pageant.
She won Miss Georgia’s Outstanding Teen competition in June in Columbus to qualify for Miss America’s Outstanding Teen, set for Aug. 13 in Dallas, Texas.
“It feels so surreal,” said Zhang, 17, about the Miss Georgia competition, her fifth pageant victory in as many years. “When they called my name, I just started bawling. A lot of girls like me dream about that moment. I’m an emotional person and I just broke down because it’s so surreal to be acknowledged as Georgia’s Outstanding Teen, because it’s a dream I’ve had for a long time. It just shows that hard work and perseverance pay off. It’s an indescribable feeling.”
Last September, Zhang was named Miss Gwinnett County’s Outstanding Teen at the Gwinnett Fairgrounds. She has also earned Miss Troup County, Miss Atlanta and Miss Northwest Georgia titles.
The Johns Creek resident — who will enroll at Vanderbilt a few days after the Miss America’s Outstanding Teen event concludes — looks forward to her final pageant as a high schooler, but admits to a mixture of pre-pageant emotions.
“I’m excited to have my one last hurrah in the Outstanding Teen program,” she said. “To compete on the national level is a huge honor, so I hope to utilize all the skills I’ve learned in my years in this program and use them to the fullest extent on the Miss America stage.
“I’m really excited — there’s always adrenaline and there’s always nerves but there’s lots of excitement. And meeting the other girls is really cool.”
Zhang’s interest in pageants came as a result of her kinship with two former contestants whom she knew from their dancing school.
“I started competing almost five years ago, right before I started high school,” she said. “I’ve been keeping up with it because I love this program so much. I got involved in the Miss Georgia Outstanding Teen program because I was inspired by former titleholders — Patricia Ford and Rory Pan. They both studied at my dance studio, Atlanta Professional Dance Academy, and I saw the changes the program had brought to them and I wanted to see those changes in myself.”
There’s also a good bit of scholarship money up for grabs. The Miss America Most Outstanding Teen program, which was founded in 2005, has given nearly $1.5 million in cash scholarships for attendance to more than 200 colleges and universities. Zhang has thus far earned about $8,000 in her pageant career.
With Vanderbilt beckoning and her teen pageantry days coming to a close, Zhang said the future may yield more pageant stories to share.
“I would love to one day compete for Miss America,” she said. “I would like to take a couple of years off for college, but I would love to continue to compete.”
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