Miss Southeastern 2018 Alyssa Larose has experience competing in pageants. Larshell Green/The Lion's Roar
Miss Southeastern 2018 Alyssa Larose earned her way to the crown in the university’s most recent pageant, but such crowns may be old news for the pageant veteran. Larose got her start in pageants at the age of four in Louisiana’s chapter of the Cinderella International Scholarship Pageant. She won the personality award at the state level, which allowed her to go on to the international competition in Las Vegas.
Larose discussed how her personality continued to carry her through her later pageant career.
“I was super talkative the entire time I was there,” said Larose. “I don’t remember everything about it because I was so young, but apparently when we were there in the hotel lobby, I would talk to everybody, especially the judges, but I didn’t know that they were the judges.”
After making it into the top five, Larose won over the audience when she declared that she wanted to be a pediatrician in the future.
“I had never even heard of the word ‘pediatrician’ before, but they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said I wanted to be a pediatrician,” said Larose. “The whole crowd went crazy.”
Winning the Cinderella pageant allowed Larose the opportunity to tour the country and meet other pageant girls her age.
“Throughout that pageant, I made all sorts of friendships that I still have today,” said Larose.
One of those friendships, which was with the current Miss Louisiana Laryssa Bonacquisti, is what sparked Larose to seek the title of Miss Southeastern.
“Laryssa crowned me as the International Tot in 2003, and so when she won Miss Louisiana, it was like, ‘Wow, I want to do that again,’” said Larose. “That became my goal. I’m going to work toward her crowning me at Miss Louisiana. I want to have a picture of her crowning me in 2003 right next to a picture of her crowning me as Miss Louisiana.”