Miss America Betty Cantrell inspires Mount de Sales students to pursue dreams

Miss America Betty Cantrell's return to her high school alma mater set off a tsunami of selfies Wednesday at Mount de Sales Academy.

Students with cellphones in hand flocked to the 2012 graduate at a "meet and greet" reception in the lobby of the David J. Zuver Performing Arts Center, where Cantrell began her quest to sing on Broadway.

"It's so good to see you," a smiling Cantrell said as she hugged headmaster David Held.

"We're so proud of you," Held told her before presenting her with a new school T-shirt.

"Great. I can wear it on travel days," she told him.

She will spend 340 days on the road, covering about 20,000 miles a month during her year-long reign, she told a packed audience at the Zuver Center.

During candid question-and-answer sessions, students didn't hold back.

"Were you one of the cool kids in school?" Molly Craig asked.

"Good question. Um, no," said Cantrell, who recalled that she had braces and rarely wore makeup her first three years at the Catholic high school.

"My awkward stage lasted longer than most," she said.

"Was anyone mean to you at Miss America?" one of the students asked in the auditorium.

She admitted the women were all really stressed in the two weeks leading up to the competition.

"But I wouldn't say anybody was really mean to me," she said, nodding her head as if others were not as lucky.

Cantrell told the students to ignore naysayers and pursue their dreams.

"What are my chances of becoming Miss America?" asked one of the senior boys, who elicited a roar of laughter and then followed up with an inquiry about her relationship status.

"You're very brave," Cantrell told the young man as the laughing audience waited for her answer.

"I forget the first question, now," she said.

"You don't have to go in order," he said, as the laughs continued.

"Zero," she answered to his shot at the crown. "My relationship status is in a relationship. Sorry about that."

It's a question she's accustomed to during Q&As at schools, she said.

Thursday, she travels to her elementary school, Sacred Heart in Warner Robins, and she will make a stop Friday at Northside High School.

Saturday, she sings the national anthem at Mercer University's basketball game. She was studying voice at the college until she took a hiatus last spring to concentrate on preparing for the Miss Georgia competition.

When managing performances and school work, she told MDS drama students to prioritize what's important.

At the end of the assembly, Cantrell shared the powerful singing voice that catapulted her to the crown and won the talent competition in each pageant along the way.

She sang "Astonishing," a reprise of the song she first belted out as "Jo" in "Little Women" on that high school stage.

"Oh, my God. It was amazing," said student Anna Nichols. "I like hearing her sing. It always blows me away."

Caitlin Schwartz was a Munchkin when Cantrell starred as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" and took to heart the advice shared by her fellow cast member.

"You can make mistake after mistake and as long as you don't give up. You can make it to where you want to be," said Schwartz, who aspires to be a voice actor or drama teacher.

'I SCREWED UP ROYALLY'

Cantrell began competing in pageants just a few years ago and candidly admitted having a less than perfect performance in Atlantic City.

She sobbed backstage after thinking she had lost by botching her on-stage question about whether she thought New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had cheated in the "Deflategate" scandal.

With a wet tissue still in her hand, she headed back to the live broadcast and realized she had nowhere to put it.

Miss Hawaii, who was named Miss Congeniality, took it off her hands at the last second.

After Cantrell's earrings fell off and she tripped twice in her evening gown, she was shocked when her name was called as the new Miss America.

Looking back, she sees those mishaps as added jewels in her crown.

"I screwed up royally -- royally," she emphasized by pointing to her tiara. "And I won Miss America. No matter how many times I made a mistake, the judges could still see who I was and that I was confident and that I could keep going and that I was strong enough for this job because of those mistakes that I made and because I recovered from it."

Cantrell had decided she would be herself throughout the competition.

"Because I'm kind of crazy and I thought that would set me apart," she said. "I screwed up the whole night, like literally the whole night. That's probably how I stood out to the judges. 'That girl cannot do anything right.'"

Her drama teacher, John Freeman, who introduced her as one of the school's success stories, reminded Cantrell about her first role at the school -- a tree.

"I was a really cool tree. I moved around and stuff," she joked in a private session with the fine arts students.

"You can go from being a tree to a Miss America," Freeman said. "She found that it's not the role you play, it's the part that you play, meaning that you're going to take it, you're going to strive to do the best you can and the more that you work on it, the better you're going to get and she did. She became better and better and better from year to year to year."

Cantrell sees the pageant title as the ticket to her dream career.

Although she has already been in contact with Broadway producers and a recording company about doing an album, Cantrell vows to continue being herself.

"My friends still treat me like I'm very normal," she said. "They're not going to let this go to my head."

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and follow her on Twitter@liz_lines.

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Miss America Betty Cantrell inspires Mount de Sales students to pursue dreams ."