By Brielle Saggese
The 2015 Miss Indiana Pageant continued its competition June 18 at the Zionsville Performing Arts Center.
The evening proceeded much like the first round of competition where the Miss Indiana and Miss Indiana Outstanding Teen Contestants were divided into groups to perform different categories each night.
For Thursday’s events, the Miss Indiana Sigma Group competed in On Stage Question, Alpha Group competed in Swimwear and Gown and Mu Group competed in Talent.
Miss Purdue University Ashley Zeiner of Zionsvilleadvanced in the pageant with the Alpha Group, participating in the Swimwear category.
For the Miss Indiana Outstanding Contestants, the Red Group competed in Activewear, the White Group competed in Talent and the Blue Group competed in Gown and On Stage Question.
Miss Southern Heartland’s Outstanding Teen Shelby Kate Everitt of Carmel competed in the evening’s Activewear category and Miss Fall Festival’s Outstanding Teen GracenStanczykiewicz of Zionsville sang “Home” from the musical, “The Wiz” in the Talent category.
Because of the contestants’ busy week, Stanczykiewicz said she had to be careful to preserve her voice for the competition.
“It’s definitely something you have to be mindful of,” she said. “You don’t want to be screaming and shouting and it’s definitely important to get your rest. I’ve been getting good sleep and warming up properly this afternoon.”
For the Gown and On Stage Question categories, Miss Banks of the Wabash’s Outstanding Teen Samantha Robbins of Zionsville discussed her platform, D.A.R.E. to be Drug Free.
Robbins said, “I know with the D.A.R.E. program resistance skills are a huge factor of the curriculum taught. Because of those resistance skills, I made the personal decision to go a life free of drugs of any kind.”
At the end of the night, the pageant announced various preliminary winners for the Activewear/Swimwear and Talent categories.
Of the Miss Indiana Outstanding Teen Red Group contestants, Miss Harvest Homecoming’s Outstanding Teen Shannon Dohono won in Activewear and of the White Group, Miss Elkhart County’s Outstanding Teen Alyssa Hochstetler won in Talent.
For Miss Indiana, the Alpha Group Swimwear winner was Miss Harvest Homecoming Morgan Jackson and the Mu Group Talent winner was Miss Crossroads to America Quesly Bunch.
The competition will continue with another preliminary competition on June 19 at 7 p.m. and a finals competition on Saturday, June 20 at 6 p.m.
