South Florida woman wins Miss Florida crown in Lakeland

By Suzie Schottelkotte

Posted Jun 30, 2018 at 10:42 PM
Updated Jul 1, 2018 at 2:29 PM

Taylor Tyson, Miss South Florida Fair, was crowned Miss Florida on Saturday evening in Lakeland amid a bevy of sparkle and happy tears.

LAKELAND — Taylor Tyson, Miss South Florida Fair, was crowned Miss Florida on Saturday evening in Lakeland amid a bevy of sparkle and happy tears.
Miss Florida 2017 Sara Zeng of Palm Coast presented Tyson with her crown, sash and a bouquet of roses in the climax to the nearly three-hour pageant at RP Funding’s Youkey Theatre. With the Miss Florida crown comes a cash scholarship totaling $20,000 and a prize package worth more than $25,000. The scholarship amount increased by $5,000 after a benefactor donated that amount Saturday.
Tyson hails from Jupiter and is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University and a law student at Stetson University. For her talent during the pageant, the classical pianist performed “Mephisto Waltz.”
2018 Miss Florida Pageant
Tyson, 23, will represent the state in the 2019 Miss America Pageant on Sept. 9 in Atlantic City, where young women from across the country will vie for $55,000 in cash scholarships.
Saturday’s event capped five days of competition in Lakeland, during which 40 young women competed in preliminary rounds including eveningwear, fitness and lifestyle, talent and interview categories.
Based on those preliminary-round scores, judges selected 10 semi-finalists and an 11th people’s choice semi-finalist chosen through online voting.
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2018 Miss Florida Pageant
Among those semi-finalists were Miss Winter Haven Morgan Boykin, an agriculture communications major who’s dual-enrolled at Hillsborough Community College and the University of South Florida, and Miss Florida Citrus Megan Price of LaBelle, a student at Florida Southern College majoring in multimedia journalism and sports communication and marketing. Neither was among the five finalists.
The final five included contestants from Orlando, Sarasota, Palm City and Tallahassee.
During Saturday’s competition, judges evaluated the finalists based primarily on their talent performance, which accounted for 35 percent of their final score. A backstage interview made up another 25 percent, and the eveningwear competition totaled yet another 20 percent. The lifestyle and fitness/swimsuit category and the onstage interview category accounted for 15 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
Miss America Pageant organizers announced last month that the swimsuit competition will no longer be a part of the national contest, but the Miss Florida organizers decided to keep it as part of this year’s event.
Other Miss Florida Scholarship Pageant contestants with Polk County connections were Miss Lakeland Isobel Skormin, Miss Polk County Aaliyah Manning and Miss University of Central Florida Courtney Jones, who hails from Lakeland.
Earlier in the evening, Jessica Sales of Orlando was named Florida’s Outstanding Teen from among 36 contestants statewide ages 13-17. Along with her crown, presented to Sales by Florida’s 2017 Outstanding Teen Reece Weaver of Jacksonville, Sales was given $1,800 in scholarship money and a prize package totaling more than $25,000. She will move on to compete in the national Miss America’s Outstanding Teen competition July 28 in Orlando.
This year’s pageant marks the third consecutive year Polk County has hosted the Miss Florida pageant, which pumps an estimated $2.2 million into the county’s economy annually, according to Jim Cormier, communications specialist at Central Florida Polk County Sports Marketing.

http://www.theledger.com/news/20180630/south-florida-woman-wins-miss-florida-crown-in-lakeland