Miss South Carolina Pageant Tickets
Overall Rating
4.0
By Terry
Best in the Nation
Township Auditorium - Columbia
The pageant was outstanding!. Very well organized. The girls were beautiful and very talented.
By PoeticT
Miss South Carolina/USA Pagaent
North Charleston Performing Arts Center - North Charleston
The venue was nice. The only thing I was not happy about was that someone that was with seat was supposed to had been ADA for his walker and it was not at all and the attendant didn't seem to show concern.
Details
About Miss South Carolina Pageant
Since 1923, young women have competed in the Miss South Carolina Pageant to win the title and go on to take part in the Miss America Pageant. Launched in Myrtle Beach, the Miss South Carolina Pageant moved to Greenville and Spartanburg before settling in its current home in Columbia in 2011 at the Township Auditorium.
Davia Bunch, 21, a ballet dancer, competed as Miss Spartanburg and was awarded the title of Miss South Carolina 2018 in June. She was a double preliminary winner in the swimsuit and talent competitions. As Miss Bunch prepared to take a gap year from the University of South Carolina to perform her duties as Miss South Carolina and compete in the Miss America pageant, she spoke of using her platform to promote bone marrow donation for patients with leukemia and lymphoma.
The Miss South Carolina Scholarship Organization leads the nation in scholarship awards given to young women. Miss South Carolina 2018, Davia Bunch, was awarded $40,000 in scholarships, and the pageant gave out more than $165,000 in scholarships and raised $169,000 for the Children's Miracle Network.
Notable Miss South Carolina winners include Miss America 1994, Kimberly Clarice Aiken, television personality Nancy O'Dell (1987), Broadway star and opera singer Kimilee Bryant (1989), author and humorist Jane Herlong (1979), and Amazing Race contestant Kelly McCorkle (2002). Miss America 1957, Marian McKnight, also was a former Miss South Carolina.
The pageant includes three phases held over several days: a talent portion, a fitness segment, and an onstage Q&A with the contestants. In previous years, when Miss America and state pageants were seen primarily as beauty contests, the young women posed in a swimsuit and evening wear competition. As of 2019, that was replaced with a fitness component in keeping with the new contest guidelines. The top 16 contestants after these competitions go on to compete in the main Miss South Carolina event.
Columbia's home for the pageant, the historic Columbia Township Auditorium, is a three-story Georgian Revival theater built in 1930 that has won multiple awards for its preservation, renovation, and restoration. The Township Auditorium was selected for the National Registry of Historic Places in 2005.