LMS student wins beauty pageant

A Lincoln Middle School student was crowned Little Miss Wyoming Preteen after having stepped away from the beauty pageant scene for the past four years.

For 13-year-old Jaylene Gallegos, coming back to competition resulted in a title. Jaylene is a typical teenager who admits to sleeping in most mornings and enjoys playing basketball and volleyball.

However, when it comes to pageants, Jaylene gets to show another side of herself, the side that enjoys the attention and the glamor that comes with the competition.

"I love the fact that it's all eyes on me," she said.

Jaylene enjoys performing in front of people. She plans auditioning to sing the National Anthem at the Red Desert Roundup Rodeo. Along with her interests in modeling and acting, Jaylene says pageants fill many of her interests.

Pageants have been a part of Jaylene's life since she was an infant, starting with her mother Mercedes entering her into baby contests.

Mercedes herself has competed in pageants throughout her life, most recently being involved in the Mrs. Wyoming America pageant in 2015.

As the two prepared for the pageant, they bonded over their shared love of the competition.

"It was good mother-daughter bonding time," Mercedes said.

Mercedes said their love of pageants is a bond they can share as Mercedes passes her experience on to Jaylene.

The competition focused on several segments, including a question and answer period with judges, a talent showcase, a casual wear segment and an evening gown or party dress segment.

Jaylene's talent entry, performing Olivia Newton John's "Hopelessly Devoted to You" earned a perfect score by judges. She placed highly in other events as well.

"Pretty much in all of them, she was in the top three,"Mercedes said.

Jaylene said she felt nervous as the start of the pageant, but quickly became comfortable with the competition. At the end of the pageant, she recalls not expecting to win the crown. Then, when the other girl was named first runner-up for the competition, all time stopped. She was in shock.

"I started tearing up a little," she said.

Jaylene said she plans to represent the Little Miss Wyoming Preteen crown throughout the next year and looking forward to meeting people while traveling the state.

At school, Jaylene enjoys history, language arts and medical detectives classes. Her experience holding and dissecting a sheep brain during a medical detectives class and other lessons has influenced her to become a neurosurgeon after she graduates from college. The $250 cash scholarship Jaylene received went into a bank account set up to help pay for college.

"If you're going to be a neurosurgeon, you're going to need a lot of scholarships," Mercedes told her daughter.

Jaylene will be taking Algebra 1 from Green River High School in the coming school year, as well as we as take an honors science class. She has earned a 4.0 GPA win the last year, an achievement that resulted in her receiving an academic award during the pageant.