Pageant News Bureau - Miss Teen USA 2003, Page 7

What star is that?

Savannah has gotten very fashionable the past few years. There was a best-selling book about it. John Travolta came to town to star in a movie. Clint Eastwood came to town to direct a movie. Then Sandra Bullock bought a house in the area, and then Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez did the same. For better or worse, Savannah has been discovered.

Photo by Todd Killen Photography

With celebrity sightings so common these days, some tourists swear they have spotted Julia Roberts in the historic port city. It must be her, they say. She's from Georgia, right?

In fact, Ms. Roberts is from Georgia, but she's not from Savannah. The bewitching young lady these star-hunters saw was probably Cassady Lance, Miss Georgia Teen USA. There is a resemblance, yes? And didn't somebody say, "She was like Julia Roberts, only prettier"?

Ms. Lance was born and raised in Savannah, and she was a coastal peach from an early age. She was in children's pageants until she was about 11, then quit to try modeling. She appeared in a magazine ad for Hawaiian Tropic as a preteen. At age 15, she got back into pageants, and she won Miss Georgia Teen USA on her third try.

Photo by Benjamin Gibbs / PNB

She used to want to be a pediatrician, and she enrolled in a medical magnet program in high school to learn how hospitals worked. "That changed my mind," she says. She realized she was just a bit more squeamish than a doctor ought to be. She still loves children, but now she has her eye on a career in a law.

Palm Springs is a long way from Savannah. The air is different, the light is different, even the palms are different. But people there know beauty when they see it. They'll like Cassady Lance.

Brittany Carpenter, Miss Arkansas Teen USA

She can make you dream

Brittany Carpenter recently graduated from high school, and she left with a lot of happy memories. School is where she learned to love chemistry and biology, and it's where she first got into pageants.

Let's forget about the science stuff for a moment. Ms. Carpenter's initial contest experience was in high school beauty revues. These events, very popular in the South, are "pageants" in the traditional sense of the word – cute girls, fluffy gowns, friendly hometown crowds. "They were fun," she recalls.

That might have been the end of it, but people outside the school auditorium were starting to take notice of Ms. Carpenter's looks. When she was shopping at a favorite store, the employees approached her and asked her to model the shop's clothes. What girl could say no?

Photos courtesy of Brittany Carpenter

In her first try at Miss Arkansas Teen USA, she was fourth runner-up, a respectable showing for a relative newcomer. The next time, she won.

Now, back to the chemistry and biology. Ms. Carpenter wants a career that combines the two. She enters the University of Central Arkansas in the fall, and after that, she wants to go to medical school and become an anesthesiologist. That's a doctor who specializes in keeping the patient unconscious but otherwise healthy during surgery.

Someday, this beauty may put you to sleep, literally. And wouldn't her face be a nice image to take with you as you drift off into dreamland? It's too bad she'll be wearing a mask.

Of course, if Ms. Carpenter wins Miss Teen USA, her college studies will be put on hold, and her medical career will be slightly delayed. But don't postpone your surgery just to wait for her. (Unless it's minor surgery.)

She's up there

"Those little town blues"? Not for Nicole Cuppy. She loves living in a tiny town in South Dakota. It has no stop lights, no stop signs, very few people. Everybody knows everybody.

It's not a swinging place, but the sky at night is teeming with stars, and the air smells like air instead of exhaust. Sometimes you wake up to a rooster crowing. Out on the horizon are fields of wheat, corn, soybeans, sunflowers. (Pardon a PNB opinion, but it sounds like paradise.)

Nicole Cuppy, Miss South Dakota Teen USA
Photo by Michael Solberg Photography

Ms. Cuppy isn't technically a farm girl, since her family doesn't make its living from agriculture. But she has done plenty of farm work.

Nicole Cuppy's winning high jump
Photo courtesy of Nicole Cuppy

She knows how to move cattle, plant crops, even run a combine. Out in the country, you learn a lot of things.

She has to be versatile in school, too. It's a small high school, with a total student body of 32, and that includes the seventh and eighth grades. "Everybody has to do everything," Ms. Cuppy said with a laugh. She has been a dance team member, cheerleader ("very small teams to cheer for") and track and field star. She won the state B high jump championship in May 2003.

At just under 6 feet, Ms. Cuppy may be the tallest girl in her little town, and since she's Miss South Dakota Teen USA, she's probably the prettiest. But she's still too modest to admit it. She won her title in her very first pageant, and the idea of being beautiful is a little new to her. We suggested she try modeling, but she says becoming a math teacher would be more practical. "First college, then maybe modeling," she said.

But she does want to be Miss Teen USA. She's eager to discover the wide world outside her hometown. New York, maybe? "Yes, yes." She would like to get a look at those skyscrapers. She's already seen the sky.

Nicole Cuppy and her friend Hunter at a Disability Awareness fund-raiser

Photo courtesy of Nicole Cuppy

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