How Miss America Transformed Abbie Stockard’s Life and Family.
Abbie Stockard wasn’t a little-girl-in-tiaras kind of kid, but once she stepped onstage, her whole perspective shifted. She started pageants during her first year of college, and the first prize bagged her attention: the title of Miss Auburn University comes with a year of free tuition. Understood at once how that payout could make her mom, a single parent juggling four jobs, breathe a smaller sigh of relief.
Mom often logged long shifts and auto-matic overtime, the kind that keeps the family afloat but leaves little left for ballet batteries or football jerseys, let alone college. When Abbie spotted the scholarship option, she didn’t see a beauty competition; she saw a stage for a more affordable future.
“My parents always gave everything for me and my twin without wanting us to ever carry it, yet I felt the weight,” she shares with PEOPLE, recalling the tuition they saved for her and her brother to attend Auburn. “I searched for any small way to ease the load, to show I noticed and appreciated it.”
The singer and future doctor continues, “I thought, if I could try, why wouldn’t I?”
When she heard about the campus pageant, she had only a week to prepare, but that only fueled her fire. She borrowed a sequined dress from a sorority sister, dusted off a ballet number she’d learned for a freshman recital, and rehearsed every spare moment. Stockard stepped onstage dreaming but ready, her courage bright.
The crown and sash went to another, yet she left the theater with new wings. Finishing third runner-up, she unlocked a passion she never knew she had and planted the seeds that would unfold into the Miss America crown someday. More than the title, the experience reminded her of the late-night study sessions her mother balanced to give her a strong runway into the future.
“My parents are divorced, and just as I was heading into ninth grade, Mom was juggling four jobs,” she says. “They won’t ever say a word about being stretched thin, but I see them. I see how hard they push. The look in Mom’s eyes when she can’t make the recital because a shift ran long—no one needs to spell it out for me to feel it.”
When Stockard was accepted to her dream college, the price tag took her breath away. She went straight to the finance office, then to the dance school to calculate how the recital, private lessons, and park rehearsals stacked on top of fees. It was a light-bulb moment. To ease the weight on Mom’s shoulders, she decided to cut expenses in any way she could, so she turned late nights and weekends into ways to dive into her own deadlines, too.
“I watched her struggle and thought, ‘How does she hold it all together?’” the pageant queen remembers. “Freshman year at Auburn, I couldn’t take a job because I was buried in classwork. I carried that glimpse of the grind with me, and it opened my eyes. I wanted to step in, try it out, and see what might happen.”
At that first round with Miss Auburn University, Stockard couldn’t yet picture a shiny national crown in her future. She only felt a spark and wanted to earn a shot to give back to her teachers and to the family that sacrificed so much.
To her, pageants and dance felt like two different worlds. Stockard had been pirouetting and jeté-ing since she was a little girl, and she had paraded at the collegiate level with Auburn’s Tiger Paw dance team. Yet pageant day demanded a different formula of strength and grace. She needed to collect her breath, stand taller, and spark conversations State from stage. That suited her perfectly.
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“I spotted another local preliminary in Birmingham the week after I’d won a preliminary, so I hopped in and won that one, too!” she laughs, recalling the burst that sent her straight to the state level. The Miss Alabama title didn’t come easy; it took her three tries before Stockard finally got the crown.
This September, Stockard finished her year as Miss America 2025 and handed the crown to Cassie Donegan. Carrying the national title kept her constantly on the move. For twelve months, she jumped on one flight after another, stopping in city after city to make appearances and address college and community crowds.
“You’re always in the spotlight. The crown gives you a national platform, and suddenly everybody’s watching you, making snap judgments, and tuning in to whatever you say,” she says. For her, the pressure was clear and real from day one.
“I remember the moment I won Miss America. The first thing I said in the car with the team was, ‘Can I really do this?’ I’ve always been a people pleaser, so I worried I wouldn’t meet everyone’s expectations,” recalls Stockard. “At first I took that weight with me to every appearance. But over time, the more I showed up, the more I realized I was free to just be myself. The pressure just melted away.”
To devote her time to the crown, Stockard pressed pause on the everyday rhythms of her life—she even set her nursing program aside. Now that the final walk is in the rearview, she’s stepping back into the world she pressed pause on. It feels like restarting, but she’s carrying the spark and energy that filled her the moment she first stood in the spotlight.
“I look back at the Abbie I was before I became Miss America and I realize how much I’ve changed. Some days I sit in class, the professor droning on in the background, and I think, ‘How did I even spend the last year?’ It feels surreal.”
“It’s true I don’t give many speeches in nursing school, but I’ve finally found the confidence to do it whenever the chance shows itself. I’ve lined up a handful of events this spring, and they’ll all be just ‘me, Abbie’ without the crown,” she shares. “The Miss America experience taught me how to be at ease on a stage.”
Scholarship was always the goal for Stockard. Add up the awards from the local and state levels, and the total is more than $89,000. “Every penny went on the balance sheet for nursing school,” she notes. “I walked the stage, took the checks, and signed the loan—only to then be told just before regionals to sign the forgiveness papers. When they crossed off the last number on my loan statement, it took a full beat to process what ‘debt-free’ even sounded like.”
The family feels it, too. “When graduation day finally comes, Mom and Dad’s other bills will still be bills, but they’ll know their last-child-line-Item is blank. Then part of Miss America’s final mission will be carried out in my living room. I’ll be gifting the same kind of aid to a future student,” she promises.
“Every time I step on stage this year, I mention the scholarship money on purpose,” Stockard shares. “I really believe a lot of folks still picture the Miss America pageant as a glitzy show and miss the part where the scholarships matter. There are girls sitting in the same spot I was, looking for help to pay for their college, and I want them to know the Miss America organization might be the path they’ve been hoping to find. I talk to them every chance I get, hoping they’ll see the support that’s waiting for them.”
