Miss Augusta 2017 Visits Rotary Club
The 2017, Miss Augusta might not be from the town, but she and it have several similarities. Cari Anne Cashon has always been an entrepreneur, something she says her and the people of Augusta seem to share.
The 23-year-old is originally from Ponca City, but is currently completing her Masters in Business Entrepreneurship at Wichita State University. This year she’s also started her own business making caring cases for beauty pageant sashes and crowns. The combination keeps her busy, but also drove her to look for pageant contests that offer several scholarships. The Miss Augusta pageant offers one of the biggest scholarship opportunities around for those competing for Miss Kansas.
“The town is so supportive of what I want to do,” Cashon said. “I can call up business owners and they will do anything to help me. The scholarships come from local businesses, so it really shows how the small town is so supportive.”
That support, Cashon said has allowed her to pursue her business, write a book, and to pay for her classes, freeing up her time to promote her platform and to meet and see the best Augusta has to offer through talks and events. Cashon’s platform is brain injury awareness, after experiencing a life altering brain injury.
Cashon grew up a Tomboy, but grew to love cheerleading. Her skills developed in high school landed her a scholarship for cheerleading at Oklahoma University. Cashon said after suffering four concussions throughout her cheering career, she was dropped performing a lift maneuver and suffered a concussion.
“I didn’t tell anyone and the next week at practice I suffered my sixth concussion,” Cashon said.
The sixth concussion caused an injury so severe, not only did Cashon have to give up cheerleading, but she also had no memory retention and had trouble talking.
“It flipped my life upside down,” Cashon said. “For six to eight months I had trouble speaking and remembering, I was emotionally unstable where I would laugh at things that weren’t funny and cry at things that weren’t sad. It was a struggle and I still struggle with memorization, but I learned to work around that.”
Doctors did not believe Cashon would make a full recovery, but miraculously she did after nearly eight months. She still has trouble memorizing things, but Cashon’s motor and speaking skills returned.
“It effected me in ways I didn’t know anything could,” Cashon said. “I couldn’t play piano anymore because of the noise. I had to wear sunglasses inside because of the light. I needed help and a voice, and now, it’s my passion to be that voice for others.”
Through the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Kansas City, Cashon is raising money and promoting awareness for research and concussion prevention. Head injuries are common in sports across the board, however they are most commonly associated with football. The scholarships offered by the Miss program has allowed Cashon to created a Brain Power Hour program for elementary schools to help raise awareness and promote healthy head protecting choices. It’s a new program Cashon is launching for Brain Injury Awareness month this March. She is also speaking and participating in several fundraisers.
All of this leads up to the Miss Kansas pageant in June in Pratt. During the first week of June, Cashon will be competing for the state title, which if she wins makes her eligible for the Miss United States pageant. While there she will compete in several categories. For her talent she is playing a version of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme song on the piano. Because of her head injury it has taken Cashon several months of practicing only that song to memorize the piece.
“Being Miss Augusta, it means I am a servant to the community,” Cashon said. “I love the community and doing as much as I can to provide it with a voice and to use my influence to further my platform.”
Story By Olivia Haselwood, AndoverLeader.Com (Proud corporate member of Andover Rotary Club)
