Berryville’s Anderson competes in Miss Arkansas’ Teen pageant

Berryville and Carroll County are well-represented at this week’s Miss Arkansas’ Teen pageant in Little Rock.

Chayse Anderson, who will be a senior this fall at Berryville High School, is competing in this week’s pageant after being crowned Miss South Central Arkansas’ Teen in September 2024 in Pine Bluff.

The daughter of Jeff and Meagan Anderson, Chayse says she has competed in pageants since she was 8 years old.

“I love the preparation I get for my adult life,” Chayse said. “Through not only Miss Arkansas’ Teen but pageants as a whole I’ve had the opportunity to prepare for job interviews and to understand what it looks like and how it feels to stand on a stage as well as how to interact with the public and deal with public speaking as well as overcome some of my anxieties when it comes to maybe my speech impediment or just some other anxieties I have when preparing for being an adult.”

Chayse speaks in a confident, engaging tone. She says expressing herself brings her joy. Although pageant contestants are evaluated on a variety of factors, she says interviewing is her biggest strength.

“I would have to say that my best field of practice would have to be interview,” she said. “It’s my favorite division of competition and I adore getting to know all my judges and being able to express what’s important to me rather than being someone of face value on stage.”

Of course, Chayse’s interests aren’t limited to pageant competitions. She is employed at Mei Li’s restaurant in Eureka Springs and enjoys other activities in her spare time.

“I am a huge reader,” she said. “I love to play video games with my younger siblings, even though they’re a lot better than I am, for sure. I really enjoy just being around my friends and being able to express myself in any way possible. I just really enjoy any form of being able to express myself.”

The oldest of three siblings, Chayse has a clear plan for her future after high school.

“After graduating, I want to pursue a career as a speech language pathologist to work with kids that have speech impediments just like my own, but I also want to pursue a degree in audiology to work with kids who may have a hearing impairment,” she said.

She noted the connection between speech pathology and audiology.

“When going into the career of audiology, you also have to acknowledge that when a child is deaf, they don’t learn to speak like everybody else because when we are learning to speak, we learn by imitating what the person in front of us is doing,” she said. “So because they didn’t grow up hearing those sounds, they have to learn how to replicate those sounds on their own. So they do go right hand in hand. I had the opportunity to shadow Dr. Rachel Beckwith back in December and I was able to interact with a hard-of-hearing child and understand how those two fields kind of cooperate.”

Of course, competing in high-level pageants isn’t an individual pursuit. Chayse credits her parents for their support of her goals.

“I have the most supportive and best parents that I could ever have imagined,” she said. “I mean, my dad drove me down to Austin back in October because I was faced with the opportunity to have Sherri Hill, who’s a couture dress designer, design my dress for Miss Arkansas. And so my dad drove me down to her headquarters in Austin back in October. And we designed my dress for Miss Arkansas and I’m so proud of it. It’s going to be beautiful for sure. Anything that I’ve ever wanted my parents found a way to make it happen and I am so thankful for them.”

After facing her own speech impediment, Chayse now wants to advocate for others, using pageants as a platform to spread her message.

“We are required to come up with a CSI, or a community service initiative,” she said. “My CSI is Stand Up and Stutter, Advocate Through Education, where I’m working to educate, advocate and empower people who have speech impediments, not only young kids, but anyone who’s ever suffered from the same disability that I grew up with. I’ve had the opportunity to speak across the country. For my CSI I had the opportunity to compete at National Leadership Conference for FCCLA and I placed 12th in the country for my division. Back in August, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Ashlen Thomason, a speech-language pathologist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, but she’s also Forever Miss Arkansas 2008. And I had the opportunity to speak with her graduate class of speech language pathologists to become more than just the textbook definition of a stutter, because as far as they know right now, stuttering is a word in a textbook. And I have the opportunity to make that more.”

“My CSI is Stand Up and Stutter, Advocate Through Education, where I’m working to educate, advocate and empower people who have speech impediments, not only young kids, but anyone who’s ever suffered from the same disability that I grew up with.”

— Chayse Anderson