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Miss Tennessee Volunteer Contestants Have Local Ties

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MARTIN — Two ladies with ties to Carroll County are competing in the Miss Tennessee Volunteer Pageant next week in Jackson.
Amanda Mayo, a 20-year-old junior from Lilburn, Georgia, won the 2019 Miss University of Tennessee at Martin title during the combined Miss UT Martin-Miss Tennessee Soybean Festival Pageant held Sunday, Nov. 11, in the university’s Russell Duncan Ballroom. The pageant is cosponsored by the university and the city of Martin. 
She is the granddaughter of Lee and Ann Carol (McCaleb) Mayo, and the niece of Murray and William McCaleb of McKenzie, and Rachel Walker of Trenton, and daughter of Frank and Jolie Mayo and sister of Anna of Lawrenceville, Georgia. She’s the youth minister at Pleasant Valley Methodist Church in Union City. 
She presents her platform, “Stand For Stem; Promoting Earth Science in the Classroom “ to classrooms across the southeast to thousands of students. 
The Miss Tennessee Soybean Festival crown went to Tera Townsend, 21, an audio engineering student at SAE Institute Nashville. Both titleholders now advance to the statewide Miss Tennessee Scholarship Pageant next June at the Carl Perkins Civic Center in Jackson. Townsend previously held the 2018 Miss Jackson title and competed in June at the Miss Tennessee Scholarship Pageant, so the Soybean Festival title qualifies Townsend to compete a second time for the Miss Tennessee crown. She is the daughter of Terry and Wanda Townsend of Huntingdon.

Mayo is a double major in biology and geoscience as well as a member of the Skyhawk rifle team.

She has competed for almost four years in Miss Tennessee preliminaries before earning this opportunity to compete for the state crown. Mayo plays the violin, but talent was not the most challenging part of the competition. 
“For me, the toughest part of the competition is swimsuit because I am plus-size, but I use that to influence other girls to let them know you can literally do anything if you just set your mind to it,” she said. Mayo’s UT Martin ties run deep: Her grandfather is university Athletics Hall of Fame member Lee Mayo, a kicker for the UT Martin football team that won the 1967 Tangerine Bowl championship. 
Townsend’s platform is “Sing a Note – Through Music Building a Better You,” and she said that her experience during the 2018 Miss Tennessee Scholarship Pageant will help her next year on the Miss Tennessee stage. Townsend sings and plays the guitar, but as with Mayo, talent isn’t the toughest part of the competition. “Well, it’s always been interview for me because I grew up with a speaking disability,” she said. “It took me a while to kind of overcome that.”
The title of Miss Tennessee is a full-time, year-long position as the governor’s official spokesperson for character education and as an ambassador for Tennessee’s Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. 
For more information about the Miss UT Martin or Miss Tennessee Soybean Festival scholarship pageants, contact Cobb at kcobb@wljt.org, or call 731-881-7561.

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