'War Eagle!': Miss America Mallory Hagan talks football and growing up in Opelika (gallery) (original) (raw)
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She may have competed as Miss New York and lived in Brooklyn the past four-and-a-half years, but
allegiances lie right here in Alabama.
“’War Eagle!’ You can say that I said it,” says Mallory Hagan, the 23-year-old crowned Miss America Saturday night in Las Vegas. “I have so many fond memories of SEC football games and growing up on the plains.”
Hagan grew up in Opelika and lived there until she moved to New York at 19.
“I graduated from Opelka High School in 2007 and was basically raised in my mother’s dance studio in the Auburn-Opelika area. I’m definitely kind of a divided household,” she says. “Half my life is in Brooklyn, where I made my adult decisions and started my adult life. But Opelika will always be home to me, too.”
Hagan, who tap-danced to James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing” in Saturday’s talent competition, began her pageant aspirations as a dancer in Alabama, competing in Miss Alabama’s Outstanding Teen program from ages 13 to 17.
In 2008, she competed in her one-and-only Miss Alabama Pageant, and she has fond memories.
“I didn’t make the top 10, but I did get a non-finalist talent award,” Hagan says. “And the Miss Alabama organization has been nothing but kind and supportive of me in this journey as Miss New York.”
After a year studying biomedical science at Auburn with plans to become a dentist, Hagan moved to New York.
“I wasn’t quite sure where my life’s journey was going,” Hagan says. The journey ended up with her as a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and she began competing in the Miss New York system to pay for it.
“This was my third time competing at Miss New York,” Hagan says. “I was first runner-up the past two years before I won this past June.”
Because of Miss America's age limit of 24, Hagan won the coveted crown her final year of eligibility.
“This was the last shot I had at my dream of being Miss America,” she says.
When her name was called in Las Vegas – in front of an audience that included 32 family members and friends from Opelika, as well as her boyfriend, who lives in New York – there was “an array of emotions.”
“Shock, excitement, gratitude – I knew my life would change forever,” Hagan says. “I knew in that moment there would be things about my life that would never be the same.”
Hagan, whose parents, Mandy Moore and Phil Hagan, still live in Opelika, makes no apologies for her dual allegiances of Alabama and New York.
“The wonderful thing about the Miss America Organization is that it’s education-oriented, and they want to give girls who move away to school a chance to compete,” she says. “They want them to gain scholarship money for their education.”
She was as comfortable wearing the Miss New York crown as she would have been as Miss Alabama.
“I’ve lived in like six different Brooklyn neighborhoods, so I definitely consider myself a New Yorker,” says Hagan, who now lives in Park Slope. “I’m as New York as they come. I’m just wrapped in a more delicate Southern charm.”
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