By Erik Harris
TRUSSVILLE – Two area girls are moving onward to represent Trussville in the Miss Alabama and Miss Alabama Outstanding Teen Pageant.
Both the Miss Trussville Pageant and Miss Trussville’s Outstanding Teen Pageant was held on July 26 at Hewitt-Trussville High School. Cassidy Jacks took the Miss Trussville crown while Sabrina Faire White walked away with the teen crown.
“All of the sudden you feel this weight on your head and you’re like, ‘Oh wait, what is that?’ and you realize it’s a crown,” White said. “It’s very surreal.”
Jacks will now prepare to compete in next June’s Miss Alabama Pageant. White will be back on the stage in March as she represents Trussville in the Miss Alabama Outstanding Teen Pageant.
“I am very much looking forward to [the Miss Alabama Outstanding Teen Pageant],” White said. “It involves a bunch of going and getting ready for talent and it’s mostly a lot of polishing to get ready for it and just confidence building.”
The two young ladies will soon begin working as ambassadors for the City of Trussville, where they will spend time promoting their personal platforms.
Jacks, a 2012 graduate of Springville High School and upcoming senior at the University of Alabama, will take the platform for Feeding America.
White is currently entering her junior year at Moody High School and is expected to pursue a platform based around establishing sexual assault survivor support clubs. As a young lady with personal experience with the crime, White believes it is imperative to let female victims know they aren’t alone in the battle against sexual assault.
“Me telling my own personal story will be able to make other people realize that they are not the only ones,” White said. “The statistics of this going on is too high, but I want to focus on making other survivors understand that there are other people out there that understand what’s going on and want to help.”
She wants to empower fellow survivors by giving them the strength to open up about their experience with the crime.
“You don’t want to tell people. It goes around in your head again and again, and just hearing somebody that has the faintest bit of a story that is like yours allows you to understand that you can open up,” White said.