Miss Wisconsin Rapids and Miss Wisconsin Rapids Teen – October ‘25

Hello world, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report for this Friday, October 3rd, 2025.

The show is probably brought to you by our good friends over at Crocatsceptic.

Big thank you to them, and thank you to everybody for joining us and a gigantic thank you

to the Miss Wisconsin Rapids and Miss Wisconsin Rapids Teen Pageant contestants.

We do this every year, we'll be doing it for almost a decade I believe, if not longer.

Lisa's long as I've been here, and it's one of my favorite segments we get to do around

here.

It's young people, and I get to feel encouraged about the future, and all that, and it's

so much fun.

And I am new to the whole pageant thing.

I've been learning about it over the last 10, fully years, and many contestants like

yourselves have helped me learn about this.

So I appreciate you all being here today, I want to thank your loved ones for dropping

you off and answering my silly questions.

Let's go ahead and let the audience get to know you a little bit.

We'll introduce yourselves, go down the line, and all my questions will kind of go down

the line here as well.

So if you said on the end, smart move.

I'm joking, I'm joking.

I'll go ahead and just go thing down the line here and let you all introduce yourselves.

We'll start with you.

Hi, my name is Sury Manning, my name is Mia Dine, I'm Bianca Bowden, Miss Wisconsin Rapids

team.

Hi, I'm Alex Markham.

Thank you all for being here, already knocking it out the park, I could understand

you all, you all had good volume.

So already we're off to a great start and Bianca it's always good to see you, thanks again

for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Bianca, before we kind of get asking questions to the contestants here, did I have a couple

little questions for you, and it'll kind of get the ball rolling here and show these

the gang here how to do it a little bit, because you're a pro.

How have you been enjoying that crown, how have you been enjoying the time?

It's been such an enjoyment and such an honor to represent my home city of Wisconsin Rapids.

Have you been able to find some new things in town or discover some stuff with this new

crown?

Did you do it?

Nothing really, I feel like I've always been pretty involved in the community, so just

being Miss Wisconsin Rapids team has got me more involved.

Anything that has stood out to you, I can't imagine how many things you've been doing

and I'm sure all of them have meant something to you, but anything really stand out to

you all.

I really enjoyed doing this, I really enjoyed going to the downtown Grand Faire because

there was a lot of good food and I'm a big fan of food, right, not very cool, very

cool.

And good to hear, appreciate that, however that was the wrong answer, joining me on

the air was the correct answer, you all remember that when you're wearing the non-joke

shirt, that's really good to hear, that's really cool, that's very cool.

It is a grand time great event, one of our favorite events, one of our signature events

around here.

And appreciate you being at so many of those events, really highlighting them, really

bringing more fun and energy, of a great energy to you to those events.

It's also, even though with young people out there, young women in particular, if they

are not going to be a part of the pageant, still look at that, look at that crown, look

at what you're doing and everything and you set a standard, you set a bar and it's really

appreciated.

It's work, doesn't very good work, I've heard nothing but good things with you and that

crown also, I would say definitely all summer, for sure, so, nice work, very nice work.

Now it's your guys' turn, now I get to ask you guys the questions and everything and

this is be fun, I promise, it'll be real simple and I'll start down the line to work our

ways over here and we'll skip over Bianca because she's done this before.

But your first really tough question, tell us about yourself a little bit.

I'm 14 years old and I'm a freshman at Lincoln High School.

Awesome, thanks there.

I am 13 years old and I am an eighth grader at Wisconsin Rapids Area Middle School.

I'm 16 years old and I'm a junior at Lincoln High School.

Fantastic, nice work all of you, appreciate that, nice work.

So now why did you enter the pageant, why would you jump into something like this?

I'm very passionate about my CSI and the whole reason I joined is to just bring more

awareness to it.

I joined Missal Wisconsin Rapids because I would always like go to the pageants and I

was just very inspired about what the girls were talking about and I really wanted to

be a part of that.

I joined the pageant because a lot of my friends have done it so I've heard great things

along with I love my CSI and care a lot about it so I want to bring more awareness to

it.

Very cool, really good stuff you all, really good stuff.

What are the benefits you found of being a part of the competition and you can go abroad

range with that wherever you want, just anything you've enjoyed about or anything you feel

has been beneficial?

Honestly, just all the other people that are doing it, we're all just so nice to each

other and definitely have made a lot of friends.

I totally agree with that and just the support that they give you is just amazing to be

in that environment.

I would agree.

I think the community is a really good experience and everyone is very open and just wanting

to support you and everything you do.

I have to say that one of the most consistent things about all the different contestants we've

had over the years and everything is that answer you all just gave there about fellowship

about the support that is there.

It's not that different when I was young, there's not enough opportunities for that kind

of thing in our society.

Having something like this is a wonderful platform for that.

The more I talk about this page and the more I realize there is nobody that loses in

this page and everybody wins in this page and yes, somebody is crowned but everybody

else is still winners and there's such a win from this.

It's a very cool experience.

You don't always get something like that.

What will you be doing for your talent portion?

My talent is a contemporary dance.

I will be reading a shell silver steam poem.

Mine will be her story about the life of a shelter dog.

Oh, that's beautiful.

That hits the heart.

I like that.

That's very good.

I'm a big fan of dance.

I love the idea of bringing that one in whenever I hear about it and one of my favorite

authors of all time is Shell Silverstein.

So I really am going to enjoy you three.

This is going to be really fun.

You guys have got this nail.

Great stuff, you three.

Great stuff.

What about your, you've all mentioned or your CSI a little bit there.

Let's get into that.

What is your community service initiative?

My CSI is break the silence mental health awareness.

And I'm sorry.

I'll have a follow-up question for these.

Why is that one important to you?

I've struggled a lot personally and I know a bunch of people have struggled themselves

and it breaks my heart to see people have to go through that and just to help others

mean so much.

My CSI is women in STEM and I chose a CSI because I'm sure that every

woman out there has been told at some point that they're not, that they can't accomplish

something just because they're a girl.

My CSI is turning kill shelters into care shelters.

The whole point is to bring awareness of the importance of responsible pet ownership

along with the importance of doing research before you adopt an animal and just supporting

your local shelters.

You know, all three very important causes to me and my heart and certainly to our community

we know that through a lot of our nonprofits and a lot of the things that we do around

here.

It's so encouraging to hear you three talking about this and granted every year we do

this, it just gets more and more encouraging because it's different topics.

It's different things that you're focusing on.

We got a lot going on in the world.

We need not only young people engaged and caring about these things but in different things

and you all brought up different topics that are all, each one of them just as important

as the other.

I'm great to have young minds, great young minds getting into these things and into these

caring about this stuff.

That's really good to hear you three.

I'm really, really good to hear.

What are you looking forward to in the competition?

I'm really looking forward to performing my talent.

I'm really, probably also looking forward to performing my talent and just hearing everybody

else's talent.

I'm looking forward to the talent to like perform it and have people really see what it's

like to be in a shelter as well as the interview.

Good to hear and a great note about the interview there too.

With this experience, it's something that it took me a little too long to realize.

I didn't know anything about pageants shocking to you three.

I'm sure that I never learned about pageants or anything but when it came to learning more

about this was actually my mom who was a feminist and very means a lot to her.

She told me so much about how some of the things that you've all mentioned about the fellowship

and women supporting women and so much of that and how we just don't have enough of

that, how important it is.

But the other part of this too that I look at is something that I learned from a young

agent, the experience on stage, the experience speaking in front of people, the experience

doing what you're doing right now, it may be hard to believe but when Bianca first came

in here, she wasn't as polished as she is now but she said she's had some reps, she's

done this a bit and now she just comes strolling in here, it's like what do you got for me?

You got to go all the way and answer your questions, all right, fine.

Did she goes out and does her next thing?

She has built some confidence in this, she has gotten some reps and she has done enough

of this where she's building more and more.

I'm sure that she has her moments like I do, I've been doing this 22 years and I get

nervous before I turn on the mic.

But the more we do these things, the more confident we'll feel and no matter what you guys

do and the three of you are going to go on to do amazing things in this world, I have

no doubt.

Whatever it is, you could use a little bit more confidence, a little bit more experience

speaking in front of others.

Again, you've already won by being here today with me answering these questions and being

a part of this page and getting that experience, getting those reps.

And it comes to that, say a young girl comes up to you and asks you, you know, why should

I be a part of the pageants, why should I get involved?

What would you say to somebody that would want to get involved with the pageants?

Honestly, it's just a great way to just connect with other girls, especially girls

your age and it's very just fun.

Like I've had a lot of fun with it and it's amazing.

I think that is a great learning experience and say you have trouble speaking in front

of crowds or you have trouble interviewing.

It's a really good way to learn from that and just expand your skills.

I think it's always good to come out of your comfort zone and the fact that it will always

make you better in any way possible.

So I think that the pageant definitely makes you go into situations that you're not necessarily

always comfortable with, but then learn to be okay with it.

Again, your answers are all amazing and all answers that I wouldn't have had until my

20s.

The fact that you guys are all nailing these so quickly is great to see Bianca, I'd like

to ask you as well though, especially now that not only you've experienced wearing the

crown and that and being through the competitions, but you're advice or what you could give

to people I think is very valid.

It comes with a little bit more standing than what I got here and everything.

What would you say to somebody?

I would probably tell them about my first experience joining the pageant.

The directors and just all of the girls are so supportive about each other and they

just want you to do better for yourself and it's really not as scary as they think.

Everybody is so nice and you will always gain something from this opportunity.

Very well said, all of you and I cannot thank you enough for the time to each one of you.

I wish you the best, great things.

I hope to see you coming back in like Bianca or something like that.

We want to remind everybody that the Miss and Teen competitions are coming up here in

town October 25th over at the pack over at the Performing Arts Center.

You'd be sure to find out more.

Get your tickets at misswisconcentrapids.org, misswisconcentrapids.org.

Be sure to follow them on social media as well.

Share their posts on your page.

You never know who might see it otherwise.

Good luck to all of you and have fun out there, okay?

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us and thank you everybody for joining us for another edition of WFHRs

or Rapids Report.