Miss Delaware was stripped of her crown for being three months too “old” — but at least the 24-year-old beauty will get to keep the scholarship that came with it, pageant officials confirmed Friday.
Amanda Longacre can still pocket the $9,000 for her education even though she can no longer represent Delaware in September’s Miss America contest after persnickety pageant officials stripped her of her title earlier this week, ABC reported.
The pretty brunette lost the coveted title she had won just two weeks earlier after national Miss America officials found out that she will turn 25 in October, making her about three months older than rules allow.
They said Longacre signed a contract before the pageant confirming she would not turn 25 before the end of the year.
“When the contract arrived in the national office and her birth date arrived, we realized a mistake had been made on behalf of the Delaware pageant,” Miss America Chairman and CEO Sam Haskell huffed to ABC.
“I don’t know how they missed it, and I don’t know how she missed it. It breaks my heart that she went through all of this, but she is not eligible and we have to honor the rules.”
In a video posted by Delaware Online, the shocked stunner claimed she checked with pageant brass about the rules before entering the contest and said they told her she would be eligible as long as she was 24 when the pageant took place.
“Now I have lost everything — my scholarship money for school, my prizes, and my crown — all because of a technicality that was not caught by the executive board,” she said through tears on the video, before her scholarship was restored.
The Penn State grad also turned on the water works during an appearance on the “Today” show Friday.
“I deserve to represent my state,” Longacre said. “It really hurts because when your peers vote you for Miss Congeniality, you work so hard to get to this position. I haven’t been doing pageants for very long, this is all brand new to me,” she said before breaking down in tears and holding her face in her hands.
She also told Fox that she never read the contract’s fine print. “I was not aware of that. It is in the contract however, but it’s very deeply hidden in the contract and, because I was told of my eligibility, I assumed that my paperwork was being verified by the board,” she said.
Brittany Lewis, also 24 and a former Miss Wilmington, was crowned the new Miss Delaware on Thursday night at a ceremony in Dover. She had finished as runner-up to Longacre, and will also get $9,000 in scholarship money.
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