My Miss America 100 Finals Story- A Guest Blog by Lauren Bradford

I know that one thing I always wonder is what happens behind the scenes at Miss America. What happens that the cameras might not show. Lauren Bradford, Miss Alabama 2021, was kind enough to take us behind the curtains with the story of her Miss America final night. I hope you enjoy it!

The final night of Miss America, after being called into Top 10, I was supposed to be #6 to perform my talent. I was called onto the stage during a commercial break, and the pedal board that I was planning to run my sound through wasn’t working. It had worked during sound check, and we could not figure out what was wrong. We started ripping apart my board on the stage in front of the judges with 15 seconds to go in commercial. I was ushered off the stage, and the next candidate in line had to perform. I was skipped put at the end of the performance schedule. Backstage, the sound guys would not give up with my board, and finally realized what was wrong right before I was supposed to go out again. After all of the commotion backstage, I finally started playing — and this time, my sound wasn’t working. I didn’t know what was wrong (a different issue than before), and had to make a choice to keep going, or stop and check everything in front of a live-streamed audience and panel of my judges. I decided to keep going, because in the moment, that really felt like the only true decision there was. Halfway through the song, I realized that my board was muted, and stamped my foot on the pedal to fix it. The crowd went wild once they were able to finally hear me. I got to finish the song with sound, and when I made it off stage, I was breathing so heavy because I had just poured everything into the performance to try and make up for what had happened. But the sound crew approached me and told me not to go anywhere, that I would be performing my talent song again. I could barely breathe and asked for some water, which they helped me find. Then I had to go out pretty soon after that to perform the full song again. 

This was truly one of those moments that I never thought would happen to me, and it happened on the Miss America stage. After finishing for the final time and walking off of stage, I immediately knew I hadn’t made it to the next round, and just started to accept how happy I was to have made the Top 10. I was running to the dressing room to change into the next interview round. I was running in my heels up to the stage to make it on before the commercial break ended, and I happened to be the first called into the Top 5. If you watched Miss America, the surprise and gratitude and emotion on my face is absolutely real. I had told myself that Top 10 was the end of the road for me. After rushing to get into my interview dress and the entire talent sound fiasco (as the last to perform), I was the first one that was supposed to enter the on stage interview. Those moments were SUCH a whirlwind with literally seconds to calm myself down. That ended up being my favorite round of competition by far because I was able to share so many things that were so important to me. 

In the final moments of Miss America, I was so incredibly honored to be standing with Emma as she was called Miss America. I was so filled with joy because I really do adore her and think she has an incredible personality, and we had spent a lot of time together because of the alphabetical order state lineups that we often did during the week — with Alabama and Alaska always being the first two in line. I absolutely was not disappointed because I am a firm believer that God has a beautiful plan for every single person, and knowing that I was able to get that close with the door closing at the very end was confirmation that I couldn’t have done anything differently. 

I can't thank Lauren enough for sharing this story with us.