Amanda Longacre, former Miss Delaware who was stripped of her crown this week, said she learned on Tuesday that she was disqualified because the Miss Delaware pageant determined she violated the age requirement. On NBC’s Today show on Friday, a tearful Longacre said she was consulting a lawyer.
According to Reuters , pageant rules say Miss Delaware contestants must be no older than 24 and cannot turn 25 before the end of the year. Longacre’s 25th birthday is October 22, meaning she will be 25 before the end of year. Understandably, pageants with age requirements must have an official cutoff date. No matter when the date is, someone will always be a few months too old, this being the case for Longacre.
The issue the former Miss Delaware has with the crown stripping is that she was previously told by pageant officials she would be able to compete in the competition since she would only be 24 at the time of the competition which is held in August. Longacre wants to know why the Miss Delaware pageant officials didn’t catch the mistake sooner before she invested so much time into the competitions and preparation. Longacre said:
“I did absolutely nothing wrong and I want to make that clear. Now I have lost everything, my scholarship money for school, my prizes and my crown, all because of a technicality that was not caught by the executive board.”
NJ.com reports that pageant officials for the Miss Delaware pageant had numerous documents stating Amanda’s age along with an official copy of her birth certificate and driver’s license. It is unclear at this time why the issue wasn’t caught sooner.
Pageant officials have already filled Longacre’s gap. Brittany Lewis, the first runner up in the Miss Delaware pageant, has been officially crowned in her place. Along with the crown goes the scholarship money and prizes Longacre had previously owned.
In total, Longacre had received $11,000 in scholarships and had already planned to take the year off at the university to fulfill her Miss Delaware duties. Now she has to reconsider all of this and has sought legal counsel.
Fortunately, the decrowning of Longacre was not in response to misbehavior such as the controversy last year surrounding Kendra McKenzie Gill, one in a long line of misbehaving pageant winners .
Longacre said the whole pageant system didn’t waste anytime removing her from the upcoming Miss America pageant. She notes she was immediately removed from a “Pageant Sisterhood Page” on Facebook for contestants. Longacre said the whole situation hurts because “those girls voted me as Miss Congeniality and it really just hurts cause they’re my friends.”
The decrowned Miss Delaware is determining if she has any legal ground to recover her lost scholarship money.
What do you think should happen to the decrowned Miss Delaware? Is she entitled to any of the scholarship money for the snafu?
