Rockville High School senior Blakely Pfaff is the 33rd Miss College Park.
Seventeen-year-old Pfaff, a Montgomery County resident, won the crown at the College Park American Legion on Sept. 28 over seven competitors. She replaced Madelyn Bronk, Miss College Park 2025.
The competition’s $2,000 scholarship prize motivated her to participate, Pfaff said, adding she is looking forward to the community involvement that will accompany her new title.
“College Park has such a rich sense of community spirit that I’m so excited to be able to fully immerse myself in it, get to know the people who live here and be able to promote it the best way I can,” said Pfaff, who previously was Miss Bethesda Teen 2024 and serves as Miss Washington County Teen 2025.
Miss College Park competitors are judged and scored based on an application and portfolio, their first impression, a personal interview and overall appearance and poise. Contestants must live, work or go to school in Maryland to be eligible.
Angie Rodriguez, the pageant’s executive director, started the contest in 1991. She said she loves watching the winners grow throughout their terms.
Bronk competed for the title three times before being crowned. Building her interview skills for the pageant each year helped her prepare for medical school interviews, she said.
“Seeing the progress each year out of me was something that I valued a lot,” Bronk said. “I felt more confident going into it and just being able to talk to people.”
Rodriguez dedicated this year’s pageant to RJ Bentley’s founder John Brown, who died last year.
Brown, a beloved community figure and a board member of the Downtown College Park Management Authority, donated $600 to the pageant every year beginning in 1995 through the association.
Even following Brown’s death, the organization continued to sponsor the pageant, Rodriguez said.
A community service grant from the city of College Park funds the pageant’s two scholarships: $2,000 for the winner and $500 to the first runner-up, Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez said Pfaff’s energy and organizational skills will allow her to shine as Miss College Park.
“Everything that she has done up to this point has been on time,” Rodriguez said. “It’s been organized. It’s been perfect.”
Miss College Park will make appearances at College Park Day, the city’s Veterans Day services and other events during her one-year reign.
When she was 13, Pfaff was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes repetitive, involuntary vocalizations or movements called tics.
Pfaff’s tics made her afraid of public speaking for years, she said, but as she got older she realized that sharing her voice was important. Last year, she became a National Tourette Association of America youth ambassador to “speak the voices of the voiceless,” she said.
Preparing for pageant interviews has helped Pfaff grow into a confident public speaker, she said.
“I’ve had to build coping mechanisms into my life to be able to walk into a Safeway,” Pfaff said. “That helps me on stage because … I already have those strategies in place.”
Pfaff has done community service projects in childhood education, including self-publishing a graphic novel, “Daisy’s Dare,” that aims to uplift and celebrate young girls, she said.
Other contestants won accolades for community service, scholarship and sociability.
Kaylie Taylor, an Eleanor Roosevelt High School senior, received both the top scholar award, given to the contestant with the highest GPA, and the community service award for her essay about her community service work.
Howard County resident Whitney Egbe won the elegance and poise award, while Towson University elementary education student Victoria Ofori was Miss Congeniality.