A young Daphne resident is headed to California this Thanksgiving after qualifying for one of the country’s largest youth pageant programs. Kaylee Ramos, the daughter of Shawn Ramos and Nikki Riley of Daphne, has earned a spot at the National Pageant for National American Miss following a strong showing in the Jr. Pre-teen division at this year’s state competition. The trip will take her from the shores of Mobile Bay to the gates of Disneyland, where she will spend a full week on a national stage carrying the banner for her hometown and her state.
Ramos placed 1st runner-up in the Top Model category and 4th runner-up in Talent at the National American Miss State of Alabama pageant, held last July. Those results punched her ticket to the national event, where she will represent Alabama among contestants from across the country. Placing in two separate categories at the state level is a notable showing for a young contestant, because category judging asks participants to demonstrate a different set of skills than the formal wear and personal introduction segments at the center of the main pageant, and the scores that count toward a national qualification come from a panel that sees every contestant in the division.
The national pageant will be held during Thanksgiving week at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, where competitors will vie for a share of more than $500,000 in combined cash and prizes. Ramos will join hundreds of other young contestants from around the country at the park for a week of events built around the National American Miss program’s mix of pageantry, community spirit and personal development. For most families, the week stretches well beyond the competition itself, with rehearsals, opening-number practices, photo sessions and award ceremonies filling the schedule from morning until night.
A National Stage in Anaheim
Anaheim, the Southern California city that has been home to Disneyland since the park opened in 1955, becomes a gathering place each November for pageant families from all fifty states. The national event draws state winners and runners-up who qualified through their home-state competitions during the year, and the Thanksgiving-week timing has long allowed families to fold the trip into the school holiday. Contestants in the Jr. Pre-teen division, the age group that includes Ramos, take part in the same core stages of competition as the older divisions, scaled to their age level, and the national finals bring together the largest field any of them will have faced all year.
The journey from Daphne to Orange County covers roughly 2,100 miles, a coast-to-coast trip that most Baldwin County families make only rarely. For local contestants, the week doubles as a kind of ambassadorship: they wear their state’s name in front of judges and audiences from every corner of the country, and they come home with a broader view of the nation that few travel experiences their age can match. Competitors who place at nationals can also earn scholarships and prizes, but organizers consistently frame the week around the experience itself rather than the trophies.
Getting to the national stage required a strong summer. The Alabama state pageant, held last July, drew contestants from across the state, and the Jr. Pre-teen division fields some of the largest crowds of any age group. Ramos’ 1st runner-up finish in Top Model and 4th runner-up finish in Talent placed her near the top of that field in both categories, and the combined showing secured her place in the national delegation from Alabama.
About National American Miss
National American Miss bills itself as a program built around age-appropriate, family-oriented competition for girls ages four to eighteen, divided into five age groups, with pageants held in every state. According to the organization, the program emphasizes inner beauty alongside poise and presentation, with judging built around what it calls an “All American Spirit” of fun for contestants and their families. The structure is designed so that a contestant who ages out of one division moves up to the next, and many participants spend years in the program, returning each summer to their state competition with the national event as the season’s destination.
Organizers say the goal is to help participants build self-confidence, develop new skills and learn to set and pursue personal goals, while also recognizing the individual accomplishments each contestant brings to the stage. The program’s categories reflect that emphasis: interviews, personal introduction, formal wear, and optional categories such as Top Model and Talent give contestants multiple ways to score, so a participant strong in one area is not shut out of the overall results. Community involvement is also woven into the program’s identity, with contestants encouraged to take part in service projects in their home communities during the year.
Because pageants are held in every state, the national pageant functions as a cross-section of the country, and Alabama’s delegation has long been part of that mix. State-level competitions determine who advances, and the runners-up in individual categories, as Ramos was, join the state queens in the national field. The organization positions its events as a contrast to the adult-oriented pageant circuit, with rules and stage expectations calibrated for each age group and an explicit focus on family attendance.
An Eastern Shore Contestant on a National Stage
Ramos’ home city anchors the middle of the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. Daphne, known to Alabamians as the Jubilee City for the rare seafood sweeps that occasionally wash ashore on its beaches, sits just across the bay from Mobile and has grown into one of Baldwin County’s largest cities. Its schools, parks and bayfront make it one of the faster-growing communities on the Gulf Coast, and its families are active in a wide range of youth programs, from athletics to the performing arts.
Daphne Elementary School, where Ramos has made the honor roll, is part of the Baldwin County Public Schools system, one of the largest school districts in Alabama, serving a county that stretches from the Mississippi line to the Florida state line along the bay and the Gulf. Elementary students across the district are recognized each grading period for academic achievement, and honor roll standing in the upper elementary grades often signals the start of the academic distinctions that follow students into middle and high school.
The Kiwanis Leadership Award that Ramos also received this year points to another thread of Eastern Shore civic life. Kiwanis clubs in the Mobile Bay area, part of a service organization with a century of history in Alabama, sponsor youth leadership and achievement awards across their communities, recognizing students who stand out in character as well as academics. Those clubs raise money year-round for children’s programs, and their awards carry weight with local families because they come from neighbors rather than from a school or a pageant organization.
Honors Beyond the Pageant Stage
Beyond her state pageant results, Ramos has picked up several other honors this year, including a State Finalist finish and the Spirit Award at National American Miss, along with a Beautiful Portfolio Award. The Spirit Award, in particular, is the kind of honor pageant organizations hand out for attitude rather than appearance, recognizing the contestant who brings energy and encouragement to the rest of the field. A Beautiful Portfolio Award recognizes a submitted collection of photographs, a category that rewards presentation and creativity outside the live competition.
Her activities reach well beyond the pageant world. Ramos performs with Center Stage Performance Children’s Theater in Fairhope, a youth theater company that stages full productions with young casts and gives Baldwin County children training in singing, dancing and stage performance. Fairhope’s performing arts community has long been one of the liveliest on the Eastern Shore, and children’s theater programs there draw families from Daphne, Spanish Fort, Fairhope and Point Clear. Stage experience of that kind tends to pay off in pageant competition, where comfort in front of an audience matters in every category.
Ramos has also spent time in modeling and acting training, including Cameo Model Management modeling camps and the Claire Sinnett Acting Camp. Modeling camps teach runway walking, posing and stage presence — the raw material of a Top Model category — while acting camps work on voice, movement and improvisation, skills that show up in personal introduction and onstage question segments. She also made an appearance on Bus Stop Forecast, a Gulf Coast television feature that gives young viewers a turn on camera, adding an early broadcast credit to a growing resume.
Her Talent category placement hints at yet another set of skills. Outside of competition, Ramos says she enjoys swimming, painting, dancing, singing and spending time with animals — a range that spans the visual arts, the performing arts and the outdoors, and that mirrors the breadth the pageant program says it tries to cultivate. Contestants who score in multiple categories at the state level usually arrive there by way of exactly this kind of varied activity list.
What Comes Next
Ramos will carry the state of Alabama’s banner into the national competition later this month, joining hundreds of other young contestants from around the country at Disneyland for a week of events built around the National American Miss program’s mix of pageantry, community spirit and personal development. She leaves Daphne as the daughter of Shawn Ramos and Nikki Riley, an honor roll student at Daphne Elementary, a youth theater performer from Fairhope’s stage scene and one of the more decorated Jr. Pre-teen contestants Alabama sent to nationals this year.
However the national judging goes, the week in Anaheim closes out a year in which she collected a State Finalist finish, a Spirit Award, a Beautiful Portfolio Award, two runner-up placements at the Alabama state pageant and a Kiwanis Leadership Award — a run of recognition that spans pageantry, broadcasting, academics and community service. For a young contestant from the Eastern Shore, that combination is the point the program’s organizers say they are trying to make: the skills built along the way, and the confidence that comes from standing on stages from Mobile Bay to Anaheim, are meant to outlast any single week of competition.