Sophia Wootten Sang Her Way to Miss Georgia Anyway

Sophia Wootten of Peachtree City won Miss Georgia 2026 on June 20, then walked the Miss America stage as the first contestant with a craniofacial difference.

The 21-year-old University of Georgia student had been told at age 2 that her speech might never be clear. She sang in Columbus anyway, then again in West Palm Beach on Sept. 6.

Columbus Called Her Name on a Saturday in June

The 81st Miss Georgia Scholarship Competition filled the Bill Heard Theatre for four days of competition in Columbus, from June 17 through June 20. Ninety-nine women entered, 52 in the Miss division and 47 as teens, drawn from cities, counties, campuses, and festivals across the state.

News Leader 9’s Ben Stanfield shared hosting duties with April Brinson Turner, Miss Georgia 1998. On Saturday night the Miss Georgia Scholarship Organization named Miss Northwest Georgia, Sophia Wootten, as Miss Georgia 2026. Miss Capital City’s Teen, Melony Tidmore of Powder Springs, took Miss Georgia’s Teen 2026.

Wootten is an undergraduate in communication sciences and disorders and disability studies. Her talent is vocal. Her service initiative is AccessAbility: Disability Advocacy in Education. Tidmore, 17, attends Liberty University Online Academy and danced ballet en pointe.

THE WEEK IN COLUMBUS

1. June 17, 2026: Preliminaries open at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts in uptown Columbus.
2. June 20, 2026: Wootten and Tidmore are crowned out of 99 contestants.
3. August 16, 2026: The organization hosts a send-off brunch at Green Island Country Club.
4. August 31, 2026: The two titleholders leave for West Palm Beach.
5. September 6, 2026: The 99th Miss America is crowned at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Over $85,000 in scholarships went out that June week, before either woman had packed for Florida.

Doctors Once Floated a School for the Deaf

Wootten was born with a complex cleft lip and palate and other craniofacial differences. Surgery started at 4 months. Structurally, she has said, there was still a great deal to fix. She had 20 surgeries in 20 years, including a major reconstructive procedure in 2019.

At 2, her parents were told her speech might never be fully intelligible and that a traditional classroom might not be the right place. She later recalled being told she might as well be put in a school for the deaf. Speech therapy bored her. Voice lessons replaced it when she was 5, and she kept them through 21.

I was the child that no voice teacher or speech pathologist wanted to see coming. I had a speech impediment because of my cleft. I had communication challenges. So voice lessons kind of became my speech therapy.

Sophia Wootten, Miss Georgia 2026

Cleft-related eustachian tube dysfunction left her with hearing loss. She now wears two hearing aids, pink and sparkly, after years of relying on one. For a long stretch of childhood she hid them, and she hid the medical story that came with them. Musical theatre, and church singing from 14, is where she says she found a microphone instead.

She is a 2023 graduate of Trinity Christian School in Sharpsburg. Pageants arrived almost by accident, with a friend, as a hunt for scholarship money and something to do. The 20 surgeries that taught her to sing became the thing she stopped treating as a private file.

A $25,000 Scholarship and a Field of 52

The official results put a $25,000 scholarship on the Miss Georgia title. Wootten’s four-day haul, counting other awards in the same week, was $25,300. Those are different pots. One is the crown prize. The other is what she banked before she left the building.

Kia Autosport in Columbus handed her keys to a 2026 Kia Sorento after the pageant. She called the gift part of the same education bet the Miss America system asks sponsors to make.

The Miss division’s last five, and what each title paid, sat like this:

MISS GEORGIA 2026 TOP FIVE

Eleven more semifinalists each received $500. The local titleholders in the 2026 field had already won city, county, campus, and festival crowns just to reach Columbus.

On the teen side, Tidmore’s title scholarship was $5,000. First through fourth runners-up took $2,000, $1,000, $750, and $500. Eleven teen semifinalists received $250 each.

The Last Two Standing Were Already Friends

Aleks Arwood, 23, of Thomasville, is also a Georgia student. She had crowned Wootten as Miss Northwest Georgia, then followed her into the state finals as Miss Gwinnett County. They had joked about landing as the last two names in the building.

That is what happened. Wootten said she stood there holding Arwood’s hand and felt peace with either outcome. She also said she went speechless when her own name came. “I’m on cloud nine,” she said the next day.

Arwood took the first runner-up scholarship and said she was at peace because she trusted the work her friend would do with the year. She has talked about putting that $6,500 toward an MBA. The Aveline Project is her service initiative. The night was a split decision only on paper.

West Palm Beach Heard a Voice Built in Therapy

Wootten has said she is the first contestant with a craniofacial difference to compete at Miss America. She took that claim to the 99th crowning on Sept. 6 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, after preliminaries at the Kravis Center.

She did not land in the Top 11. Miss Texas Regan Hutsell won the title, taking a $50,000 tuition scholarship as Cassie Donegan of New York crowned her successor.

What Georgia did take was service hardware. On Aug. 31, as 104 Miss America and Miss America’s Teen delegates signed the map at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Wootten was called first among the top 10 Quality of Life finalists. Florida’s Alexandra de Roos later won that award. Wootten stayed in the finalist group.

WHAT SHE TOOK TO WEST PALM

• The first: She has said no woman with a craniofacial difference had competed at Miss America before her.
• The talent: She planned to sing in preliminaries, the same skill she used as speech therapy from age 5.
• The service cut: She was named first when the Quality of Life top 10 were read on Aug. 31.
• The national night: She was not among the 11 who advanced for the crown Hutsell won on Sept. 6.

In Peachtree City the June sash was already being treated as a ticket to that first, not as the end of the story. Trinity Christian School hosted a free watch party in its Building 1 Student Center on Sept. 6, doors at 6:30 p.m., livestream at 7. The national argument around her name never really formed. The hometown one had already chosen its fact.

Pink Hearing Aids Met a Child Named Ruthie

About five minutes after the Columbus crowning, former Miss Georgia Patricia Ford Reeves walked up with her daughter. It was Reeves’s 10-year anniversary night. Wootten looked down, saw something pink in the child’s ear, and bent to look.

Ruthie was 4. She was wearing two pink sparkly hearing aids. Wootten pulled one of her own out and told her she did too. In her own telling, that was the sentence that explained the Saturday.

I spent so much of my childhood looking for representation I never had, and now I get the opportunity to be that representation for someone else.

Sophia Wootten, Miss Georgia 2026

Coach Bill Alverson had already given her a three-word line, “You belong here,” and repeated it backstage after the crown went on. She has carried it as a mantra. At Children’s Arthur M. Blank Hospital in Atlanta, where she had many of the 20 operations, she later walked rooms in the sash. Her last surgery there was about three years before that visit. She told families she had been told she did not belong in spaces of beauty, and that she was not on the Miss America stage only to be a first.

Smile Train, the cleft-care nonprofit, had already named her a youth advocate. She has pushed the Ensuring Lasting Smiles Act, a bill aimed at insurance coverage for cleft and craniofacial procedures that get labeled cosmetic. She founded AccessAbility Georgia as a 501(c)(3). The longer platform she carries as Miss Georgia is Every Face, Every Voice, Every Opportunity: Creating Inclusive Classrooms Through Accessibility and Understanding.

THE WORK BEYOND THE SASH

• The nonprofit: AccessAbility Georgia focuses on awareness, action, and advocacy for students with disabilities.
• The clinic path: She plans a doctorate in audiology at Auburn University and a career as a pediatric audiologist.
• The book: Winston Wants to Belong: A Dog’s Guide to Celebrating Our Differences is her children’s title on disability and belonging.
• The hospital loop: She has gone back to Children’s as Miss Georgia to sit with patients on the same floors where she recovered.

She has also said she wants to be a doctor in the field where she was once a patient. That is the year still in front of her. The national night is over. The state title is not. Wootten remains Miss Georgia 2026, studying communication sciences at Georgia, wearing the pink aids on purpose now, and taking the voice lessons that started at 5 into rooms that used to tell her to be quiet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Won Miss Georgia’s Teen in 2026?

Melony Tidmore, Miss Capital City’s Teen, won Miss Georgia’s Teen 2026 on June 20. Her Miss Georgia biography lists a 4.12 GPA at Liberty University Online Academy, a ballet en pointe program to “Carmen Suite,” and career plans that run through Yale, physical therapy, and a Doctor of Physical Therapy path. She was first alternate to Miss Georgia’s Teen 2025 before she won the 2026 title.

What Extra Scholarships Does Wesleyan College Offer?

The Miss Georgia Scholarship Organization said Wesleyan College, which it calls the first college chartered to grant degrees to women, would award a $16,000 scholarship to the new Miss Georgia and to Miss Georgia’s Teen, $13,000 to the first runner-up, and $12,000 to the second runner-up, annually for up to four years for students who meet Wesleyan’s admission requirements. Those awards sit on top of the night-of prize money listed in the official results.

Who Sat on the Miss Georgia 2026 Judging Panel?

The Miss panel was Carolyn Sapp Daniels, Miss America 1992; Catherine Liang, Miss California 2022; Randy Pruett of Texas; Tori Jackson of Mississippi; and Leonardo Powell of North Carolina. The teen panel was Shilah Phillips, Miss Texas 2006 and first runner-up to Miss America 2007; Liz Jarvis Fabian of Georgia; Dr. Larkin Page of Louisiana; David Botkins of Virginia; and Demetria Thomas of Georgia.

What Car Comes With the Miss Georgia Title?

After the June crowning, Kia Autosport on Whittlesey Boulevard in Columbus gave Wootten a 2026 Kia Sorento. She said the dealer was investing in the same education mission the state title already funds through scholarships.