Right before she was mobbed by photographers and presented with her crown and sash as the new Miss Pennsylvania USA, Camille Young was in a state of shock.
"I had actually been in the middle of a prayer," she says. "I wasn't really paying attention -- I had to ask the girl next to me if they had really called my name."
But call it they had. Young, a student in the College of General studies, beat out 57 other contestants to become only the second black woman in history to win the Miss Pennsylvania USA Pageant.
But Young, a self-proclaimed former black activist who has since "mellowed out," says that she is focusing less on the racial triumph and more on the future.
And for her, the future means a trip to the Miss USA Pageant in the spring.
"I didn't want to do it, but my friend [Arthur Murrell] convinced me," she says. "He even mailed in my application for me."
Murrell, who acted as Young's coach throughout the competition, found her hosting a local talent show and "immediately knew that she could win, that she was Miss Universe potential."
But Young has never considered herself the pageant type. Before Miss Pennsylvania USA, which took place last weekend in Pittsburgh, she had never been in a pageant or even considered the idea.
"She's always been a bit of a tomboy," her father, Bernard, says. "She was a dynamite soccer player as a kid."
Although Young has done some modeling since she was 17, she has always been turned off by the idea and says she "only [does] it for the money."
"I'm pretty much a feminist and a campus activist," she says. "I just didn't see pageants as being productive for women."
But after some research, Young found that pageants have become much more focused on civic service in recent years.
She decided that becoming Miss Pennsylvania USA would be a good way to become more involved in her philanthropic pursuits.
"I decided that, in order to say everything I need to say, I needed to be Miss Pennsylvania," she says. "The title already has so much money and recognition behind it."
She plans to use her new-found influence to help the As‚ and the Gear Up programs, both of which focus on education, and give students who would not otherwise have it the opportunity to go to college.
"I'll just take it one step at a time and see what I can get accomplished," she says.
And, the way her father tells it, Young's victory was quite the feat.
"It's really her accomplishment, her pageant," he says. "She did it all, raised all the money herself."
Pageant entrants were required to send in $900 before the end of August, in part to prove that they were serious about taking part in the contest.
Young did all of her fundraising in one month, using a variety of methods, including car washes and appealing to her church, to meet the requirements.
Although many of the girls get a few family members to sponsor them, Young says that "raising my own money made me feel more connected and more involved in the whole process."
But that's not to say she didn't have any outside help.
"The church really felt like they wanted to support her, I think because they felt like they watched her grow up," a proud father says.
She also had a lot of emotional support from her family, including her mother, Debra Sledge, and aunts, who make up the musical group Sister Sledge.
Her family connections also helped her through the most difficult parts of the pageant.
"The most important part was the interview," Young says. "Everything else was just smiling and walking."
During the competition, the judges can be standoff-ish and mean to the girls, in order to test their self-confidence, according to Young.
But Young says she felt that the judges were nicer to her because her mother is in Sister Sledge.
"They were very excited to hear about my mom" during the interview, she says. "It really humanized them for me and made the whole thing much easier."
Often times, the girls that lose the pageants become angry and hostile toward the winner. But Young found the support from the other girls to be touching.
"The only time I cried was when the pageant director told me that he'd never seen a winner that had so many fans in the other girls," she says.
In fact, during the final round of elimination, Young says she had much more support than the other contestants.
"I was really happy that the other girls rooted for me," she says.
Even so, Young knows it must have been hard for the girls who didn't win.
"I wouldn't advise other females to do pageants," she says. "Everyone that lost went home with less self-confidence."
But she went home with much more confidence as well as a hefty prize pack. She received a shopping spree, a set of luggage and a $10,000 scholarship, among other things.
In addition to the material prizes, Young now has a staff of four people who are helping her prepare for the Miss USA competition.
"They want me to do lots of publicity, get my face out there as much as possible," she says. "Plus, they put a lot of restrictions on my life already, like I can't give out my phone number or address anymore."
In the months before the spring competition, she will be working with an image consultant and an interview coach in order to increase her chances of doing well.
But despite the sudden lifestyle change, Young says that she's still the same old person.
"I think I'm still me," she says. "I feel like the same person, but now with a sash and a crown on."
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