Heroes and villains take over Poolesville for Miss Poolesville
The Miss Poolesville pageant, and its accompanying Mr. Poolesville, is a time honored tradition at PHS, starting with the first in 1999. The 2018 Miss Poolesville went off with a BANG! BOOM! POW! as the girls from the class of 2018 tackled the theme “heroes vs. villains.” Ten girls from the class of 2018 participated, including Camille Awono, Laurel Kim, Haley Harkins, Bridgette Hammett, Jirah Villajuan, Kelliann Lee, Iris Yu, Joyce Ma, Sapna Bagalkotkar, and Juanita Jaramillo. The girls were all escorted by their mothers, a first in Miss Poolesville history.
The event began with a showing of the student produced intro video, where the girls dressed up as characters in accordance with this year’s theme – Maleficent (Kim) and Sleeping Beauty (Awono), Glinda (Harkins) and the Wicked Witch of the West (Hammett), Luke Skywalker (Lee) and Darth Vader (Villajuan), Kim Possible (Ma) and Shego (Yu), and Tom (Bagalkotkar) and Jerry (Jaramillo).
The group then showcased outfits they’d typically go to school in, for the “casual” wear portion, and assorted extracurricular gear for the “active” wear portion.
Kim says of the experience: “It was a lot more stressful for me than most people. I wasn’t used to the walking around on stage! But I had a lot of fun.”
For the talent section, Awono performed a hip hop dance routine with several of her teammates from the county championship winning PHS Poms team. Bagalkotkar synchronized swimming skit with nine of her closest friends.
Global Senior Loren Fernandes said of the skit, with a smile, “It meant a lot to me that I could support Sapna. I stayed after school multiple times to help out.”
Jaramillo played “Blackbird” by The Beatles on the guitar, followed by Kim with her Korean fan dance. Ma and Yu played the Howl’s Moving Castle theme together, Ma on piano and Yu on violin.
Ma says, “At first I was stressed out and nervous about it because we had to put a lot of work to get ready in time, but the actual show went by faster than I expected and I ended up having a really good time. I don’t regret doing it. It was a good senior year experience.”
Throughout the course of the night, members of the senior class SGA, Amy Lu, Nahbuma Gana, Julia Rich, and Donald Vogel, kept the crowd amused by jokes and trivia.
The five finalists, Awono, Harkins, Villajuan, Kim and Jaramillo, were asked in the final question who their biggest heroes were.
Awono said, “My mom… she’s gotten me this far and will hopefully get me farther!” “
My dad,” said Harkins, tearing up. “He’s had a rough year, and he means so much to me.”
Juanita also said her mom, “the strongest lady I know.”
Laurel answered: “Mrs. Gomer. She’s been a pillar of support for me, a second mom.” Finally, Jirah said her mom, who “saves the day almost every day.”
At the end of the night, Jaramillo was crowned Miss Poolesville 2018. “It was a very unique experience for me,” she said. “But the girls were all great so it ended up being fun! I was really surprised to have won, definitely was not expecting it, so I very humbled and flattered.”