By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

GRASS CREEK — The Miss Fulton County queen pageant has a new organizer.

Adrianna Smith, the 2019 Miss Fulton County queen, took over the competition this year from Erika Enyart.

Previously, she served as the pageant’s emcee.

Adrianna Smith

Smith was raised in Grass Creek where she still resides.

After graduating from Caston Junior-Senior High School in 2017, she went to Purdue University, finishing in 2020 with her bachelor’s degree in ag business management.

Smith returned to work with her parents, Andy and Janet Dague, on the family’s fourth-generation dairy farm.

“I’m full time on the farm and do a little bit of everything,” she said.

Smith also married Andrew Smith in 2020 and they “have 60 acres that we’ve kind of started on our own,” she said.

“His family farms also, so we kind of got that to start merging in with each of our families,” she said.

The couple has a one-year-old son, Thomas.

Adrianna, who also serves as the judges’ chairman for the Distinguished Young Women of Fulton County competition, opted to add some workshops for those competing in the Miss Fulton County pageant, including younger girls in the Little Miss Fulton County, Junior Miss Fulton County and Teen Miss Fulton County levels.

“In the past, usually they’ve done more pageant-focused things so how to walk, how to answer onstage questions,” said Adrianna. “In rural Indiana, I feel like those aren’t quite as relevant … Being able to talk in front of a group is important, but I wanted to add more life skills aspects to it.”

“We learned table etiquette,” she explained. “We learned how to greet and shake hands, how to write thank you notes. We did a … workshop where they learned CPR, (the) Heimlich (maneuver), stop the bleed.”

“We did self defense and then our Little Miss did a stage presentation workshop, so that’s where we went over our onstage question, how to walk, all those things, and then our Teen and Miss (contestants) did mock interviews,” she added.

She noted having the girls at all the age levels take workshops together “helped build some relationships.”

She said future plans are to work to bring the pageant back to the Fulton County Fairgrounds, with it generally being held at the Rochester High School auditorium since 2015.

“One of my other big pushes this year is we had a lot of new emphasis on involvement in 4-H and the fair,” she added. “We added a lot more where they got to talk about their involvement in the fair and 4-H.”

“I really want to integrate the fair and 4-H back into the queen program because I feel like it kind of got far away from that and so we’re hoping to start brainstorming how to get it back to the fairgrounds and make it a main event of the fair again,” said Adrianna.

She said she hoped girls who participated in the pageant this year learned the competition wasn’t “just about the fancy hair and the fancy makeup and dresses.”

“We all have things to offer the world that is unique to each of us, and so I hope that they see that they have value in whatever way they bring it and by working together we can build a strong program,” she said.

She said being a pageant director was “fun” but kept her busy.

“It was definitely a lot more work than I had anticipated,” said Adrianna. “The last two months has kind of been a full-time job, especially this last couple of weeks just getting all the last-minute things together, but I definitely could not have done it without the team behind me.”

Adrianna was assisted by Karah Baumgardner, Cassie Smith, Michaela Slisher and Miss Fulton County 2023 Rachel Luce.

Adrianna said she liked seeing the pageant competitors’ “growth from start to finish.”

“We have a lot of new girls this year that they had never been in an interview situation at all and so to see just even their first interaction with me being a stranger, then to see them come pageant day and watch the interview, the growth was tremendous,” she said.

She also serves as an Indiana High School Athletic Association starter for cross-country and track and a volunteer firefighter with the Wayne Township Fire Department.