Cheyenne Thomas is a princess.
Maybe not in an ‘English royalty’ type of way, but still a princess nonetheless.
Cheyenne is the winner of the 2023 Texas Cinderella Pageant Woman division, a segment of the scholarship-oriented program, Cinderella International Scholarship Pageant. She has been working towards this win since her very first pageant.
“All I can really remember is dropping to the floor and having one of my childhood best friends pick me up because she was about to crown me,” Cheyenne says about the 2022 winner. “I could have never imagined anyone else doing it because she’s been there since the beginning.”
The anxious wait before she was crowned was a moment she’ll never forget, she says.
“They call the contestants name by name, and they always say wherever the girl is from,” Cheyenne said. “And they just kept going, and kept going, and kept going, and suddenly it was down to me and my friend. I had this wave of panic fall over me, my stomach was turning and I felt like I was about to pass out, so it took a good five seconds to realize that they had called her name [as runner-up] and not mine. I had won.”
Cheyenne’s mom, Melissa Thomas, was ecstatic about the win and says having her son, Cody, Cheyenne’s brother and biggest cheerleader, there made the moment even better.
“[Her winning] was definitely a special feeling and memory,” Melissa says. “To get to have us be together and him to experience that with her and I was so great. He has never been more proud.”
Prizes for the Cinderella International Scholarship Pageant include cash, college scholarships, several trips and other sponsored goodies. “We had a big prize package this year,” she says.
Cheyenne has been participating in pageants since she was 6 months old through the Cinderella Scholarship program and only took a short break around age 7 for a few years.
“I’ve been doing this my whole life, other than a pause I took when I turned 7, just because I had to have a talent and was not the kid that spent all of their time either in vocal lessons or in the dance studio,” she says.
Once she found her talent — dancing — Cheyenne was back in.
“I decided to do a contemporary dance to ‘This Is Me’ from The Greatest Showman,” Cheyenne says. “I chose it after I had gotten sick and started to heal because it was a story of overcoming for me. The first year, it was about overcoming all of my sickness, but this year, it was about any type of obstacle.”
Though a pleasant surprise, Cheyenne says winning was not an expectation for her this year.
“The whole week, there were a lot of curveballs thrown and a lot of stress, anxiety and tears,” Cheyenne says. “I honestly, in my heart, did not believe it was me because there were a lot of things that weren’t laying out perfectly like I wanted it to, but God had a plan."
Cheyenne had competed the day before, and learned the day of that she would need to re-wear her ballgown; however, there was a slight issue.
“I split my dress,” she says. “I figured we can use a safety pin to kind of rig it together, and I’d be fine, but then they said, ‘Oh no, you're going to do an onstage question.’ I think my mom went to three different fabric stores to try and find a certain type of thread to sew up my dress.”
The onstage question came as a shock for Cheyenne, who says that it wasn’t something they had done in the past year.
“I was like having a panic attack backstage, calling my mom and freaking out,” Cheyenne says. “I ended up getting the question, ‘What is a moment in your life that you would like to relive and why?’ and I felt so confident in that moment that I could do this.”
As a winner, Cheyenne can no longer compete at the Texas State competition but will be eligible for the international pageant until she wins or ages out at age 29.
“I think I’m ready to start moving on,” Cheyenne says. “I’m going to give myself a few more years of competing internationally, so I don’t know timing-wise, but we’ll see what happens.”
Cheyenne says this organization has been so much more than just a competition to her.
“This is a beautiful program that helps give young girls and even older girls more confidence in themselves,” she says. “I grew up with this organization, and it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. I definitely would not be who I am today without it.”
Cheyenne will crown her successor in June at the newly renovated Hilton College Station. The Cinderella Scholarship Pageant is open to all girls age 0 to 29 and local prelims are spread throughout Texas. The community is invited to join her June 2-8 and see all this youth development organization has to offer.
For more details about the program and upcoming competition, visit texascinderellapageant.com.
