From soccer drills to gowns and heels: Malverne girl to compete for Miss Long Island Teen title

Beauty pageants are not all about crowns and sashes — at least not for 17-year-old Kimberly Taff who will compete in next year’s Miss Long Island Teen pageant. For her, they’re more like confidence boosters.

“I have had to speak in front of large groups of people and share what I believe is important to me and other young women,” Taff told the Herald in a recent interview. “It’s not all about crowns and sashes, but about building confidence, finding one’s voice and expressing one’s self.”

The Malverne resident has only been participating in pageants for six months, but she’s already racking up some titles. Last year, Taff placed in the top 10 out of 89 girls and won Miss Congeniality in the Miss New York Teen USA Pageant — a pageant in which she hadn’t even planned to take part. Taff was accepted into the November 2009 contest after her mother entered her: she received a flier in the mail and decided to send in her daughter’s picture.

Intentional or not, making it into the pageant was fun for Taff, a senior at Lawrence Woodmere Academy. And, it’s what led her to apply for the Miss Long Island Teen 2011 Pageant, which will take place in Patchogue on Aug. 15 this summer. Taff and 19 others were selected out of several hundred applicants to compete for the title and the chance to represent Long Island at a statewide pageant.

“It is a great honor to be considered to represent Long Island,” Taff said, adding that she’s confident that she will perform well. “With any competition, I come with the attitude that I’m in it to win it.”

Taff has demonstrated that approach throughout her high school career. Every year for the past four years, she was named MVP and captain of her school’s varsity soccer team, and played the lead in all of her school’s theatrical productions. Taff’s academic achievements landed her on the High Honor Roll and a place in the Cum Laude Honor Society and the National Honor Society for High School Scholars.

Somehow, Taff still finds time to play on a Rockville Centre premiere soccer team and get involved in humanitarian and volunteer efforts. In the summer of 2008 she traveled to Honduras with a group called Amigos de Honduras to teach English at an orphanage. She continued to stay in touch with some of the girls she met there and still works to organize fundraisers collecting clothing and school supplies to send back. Additionally, Taff spends time volunteering for The Soldiers Project, a free counseling service for military service members returning from war zones.

But Taff also wants to help her own peers — something she believes she can do through her pageant participation. “I plan to bring awareness to how living a healthy and active lifestyle can only be beneficial to one’s life,” Taff said. “I will also try to promote that young girls should get involved in playing sports because can learn so much in a team atmosphere. What they learn on the field can transfer off the field as well.”

As she prepares for the pageant — which includes wearing only high-heeled shoes for two weeks prior to the event and working hard to collect her thoughts in preparation for the interview portion — Taff is also getting ready for her first year of college. This fall, she’ll be attending New York University, where she plans to study communications and media. But Taff hasn’t quite settled on a career path. “I’d love to be a broadcast journalist or maybe an actress,” she said.

With just under four months left before the pageant, Taff will be keeping busy and giving her all, as she always does. Her efforts, whether she wins or not, won’t be in vain. “I will be successful regardless because I’ll know that I have done my best,” she said.

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