40 years of Junior Miss

Terrie Misfeldt holds up a red stopwatch.

“I don’t know if you thought of this, honey, but I brought it,” she tells Colleen Denny, who she recruited to be judges chairwoman.

Misfeldt has been the main organizer of the Central Douglas County Junior Miss Program for a decade, and she uses the stopwatch to make sure the Junior Miss contestants’ routines stay within the 90-second guidelines.

The organization is celebrating 40 years in Douglas County, a program for high school junior girls that awards about $11,000 annually in scholarships and advances the top two contenders to the state contest. State winners go onto compete for America’s Junior Miss.

After 10 years of helping put on Junior Miss programs, Misfeldt thinks of everything.

She’s got backup CDs and notebooks of information to make sure everything runs smoothly at Saturday night’s program.

A group of hostesses for the girls glue pictures of the 13 contestants onto gold poster board, along with a thank-you to each sponsor.

“Girls, you have two minutes to be ready for Rachel,” Misfeldt calls across the room. “I’m getting to be the hard nose now.”

Then she laughs. She does that a lot.

The Rachel she’s referring to is Rachel Denny, Colleen’s daughter. Rachel and Kelly Dorius were co-winners of the Junior Miss program last year, and have come back to choreograph the girls’ opening dance.

Chelsy Conn and Kayla Knight have come back to help as hostesses. They take care of one or two girls each, helping them get dressed and making sure they have what they need.

Conn competed in 1999, and Knight competed in 2001.

“It was so much funner as a contestant,” Conn said. “Terrie’s amazing. She’s crazy but amazing.”

“I think it says something, too, that every year participants come back to help,” Knight said.

Misfeldt has never participated in Junior Miss.

“I was never this motivated as a 17-year-old,” she said.

She modeled as a teenager and later competed in the Mrs. Oregon pageant. She wanted to see what it was like to work behind the scenes of a similar program, so she decided to help with Junior Miss.

She was hooked.

“I am just so passionate about the program,” she said.

She jokes about going to her full-time job that she doesn’t get paid for. Managing her time is the hardest part of working with Junior Miss, she said.

She starts recruiting participants in October and spends the next six months helping them get ready for the program, from honing their talent to preparing for interviews to borrowing dresses. She finds hostesses and judges, as well as volunteers to choreograph the fitness routine and other events in the program. She arranges places to practice and reserves Jacoby Auditorium for the program itself.

Misfeldt said she comes back every year because the experience can be life-changing for the girls.

“There’s so much that they gain from it,” she said. “Confidence is a huge thing, confidence in themselves, that they can go outside their box.”

She said some girls come in with bad grades, and they learn that education is important.

Twenty percent of the girls’ score is based on scholastics. Another 25 percent comes from a private interview with the judges, most of whom are past Junior Misses. During the program, they demonstrate talent, which is worth 25 percent, fitness worth 15 percent and self-expression, which makes up the final 15 percent.

Winners don’t get crowns or sashes. Instead they get medals.

“It’s kind of like being an Olympian,” Misfeldt said. “They learn that this is all about being a better person.”

Putting the program together requires flexibility.

“I always tell the girls, ‘Just be open to change because things change, and we’ve got to roll with it,’” Misfeldt said.

This year was no exception. At the first practice, Misfeldt learned she wouldn’t be able to use Roseburg High School as she had in past years — the program’s participants practice twice a week for two months— but then Hucrest Elementary Principal Jeff Plummer volunteered the use of the school’s cafeteria.

Last year’s challenges were greater.

The national Junior Miss organization announced that the program was not going to continue because it had lost several national sponsors, Misfeldt said. So a group of local and state committees created Friends of Junior Miss, raised money and proposed not televising the national event, which saved a significant amount of money. The board then voted to keep the program running.

That delayed local efforts. Misfeldt didn’t find out the program was continuing until December.

Fewer girls applied than in previous years, but this year saw a few more, 13, and Misfeldt is hoping next year will have even more participants. She said she wants as many girls as possible to have the experience of participating.

Participation does come with a caution, though.

“I always warn them, once in Junior Miss, you’re always in Junior Miss,” Misfeldt said. “It’s pretty cool.”



• You can reach reporter Teresa Williams at 957-4230 or via e-mail at twilliams@newsreview.info.

If you go ... <b>WHAT:</b> Central Douglas County Junior Miss Scholarship Program <b>WHEN:</b> 7 p.m. Saturday <b>WHERE:</b> Jacoby Auditorium, Umpqua Community College, 1140 College Road, Winchester <b>TICKETS:</b> $10 each, on sale at Valley Hallmark in the Roseburg Valley Mall and at the door <b>INFORMATION:</b> 672-8533, ext. 0.