Hoover plans sendoff party for Miss Hoover 2020 Caitlin McTier

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She has been Miss Hoover 2020 for almost 19 months now, and Caitlyn McTier said she is ready to compete in the Miss Alabama 2021 competition next week.

The city of Hoover is giving her a sendoff  party Monday at Hoover City Hall at 4:30 p.m., and the public is invited to wish her well, said Miss Hoover Foundation Director Julie Bentley.

The party will be in the lobby on the third floor at City Hall and will include refreshments, Bentley said.

“It will be an opportunity for people to take photos with her and wish her luck,” Bentley said.

People also will be able to see samples of McTier’s wardrobe for the Miss Alabama competition, which will include 39 contestants at the Alabama Theatre on June 10-12, Bentley said.

Her wardrobe will include:

A gold beaded, fitted dress with a side train for the evening gown competition

A beige beaded jumpsuit with arm fringe for the talent competition, during which McTier plans to sing “Once Upon a Time” from the Broadway musical “Brooklyn.”

A black cocktail dress for the opening number

A  gold sequined short dress for the Rising Star segment, during which McTier will escort two young girls she is mentoring

A white scuba-material high-neck dress for interviews

McTier was crowned Miss Hoover 2020 in November 2019, but she didn’t compete for Miss Alabama in 2020 because the competition was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. All contestants who had won preliminaries were given the opportunity to compete to become Miss Alabama 2021 instead.

McTier has competed in the Miss Alabama competition three times already, previously as Miss Sylacauga (her hometown), Miss Tri-County (Autauga, Elmore and Montgomery counties) and Miss Tuscaloosa.

With plenty of experience and plenty of time to prepare, McTier said she is ready for this year’s competition.

“It feels great. It’s the longest I’ve ever had to wait to compete for Miss Alabama,” she said. “I feel like I’m in the best shape of my life and just feeling really overall excited.”

McTier, 21, just graduated from the University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in news media and plans to pursue a master’s degree in public relations, starting in January.

The master’s program to which she is applying is designed for students with jobs, and McTier said she has several job offers in the sales and marketing fields that she is evaluating. She spent this past summer in a virtual ad sales internship with CNN.

McTier recently was named the female winner of the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, one of the six highest awards given out by the University of Alabama each year. The award is given to a male and female member of each year’s graduating class and one faculty member for their excellence in character and service to humanity.

McTier has been battling food insecurity for more than 12 years. She became interested in the problem when she was 9 years old and noticed that a fellow classmate seldom had a snack at school. She learned her classmate’s family was living in poverty and unable to provide enough food, and that motivated her to do something about it.

In 2012, McTier started Caitlyn’s Cubby, a nonprofit organization that helps end food insecurity in middle and high schools throughout the state by providing free meals on weekends. The organization has served about 3,000 meals to students.

She is a founding member of the Alabama College Food Security Coalition and a member of the Alabama Child Hunger Task Force. At the University of Alabama, she founded a student task force to battle food insecurity and serves on the university’s Faculty Food Insecurity Task Force.

McTier worked with Jonathan Chin at New York University to make the University of Alabama a launch school for the Share Meals app, which allows students to see where free meals are on campus.

She conducted a yearlong independent study about food insecurity at the university, collecting qualitative and quantitative data through partnerships with the College of Communications and Social Work, and she created a video series that shows three food-insecure college students documenting their stories of struggling with poverty.

McTier has traveled through Alabama’s Black Belt region, speaking to people about food insecurity in rural Alabama, and visited at least 22 universities across the state to talk about food insecurity pantry structures. She also established the University of Alabama Food Insecurity Awareness Day.

McTier served two years as a member of the Capstone Women student ambassador group and was president of the 32nd Order of XXXI, an honor society that recognizes the most influential women at the Capstone based on their character and contributions.

She also was the Student Government Association’s vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion (the first black woman elected to the SGA executive council) and won the Black Faculty Association’s Academic Distinction Award.  She was on the Presidential Dean’s List and in the Mortar Board honorary, Blue Key Honor Society and Cardinal Key Honor Society.

McTier will be staying at the Hyatt Regency Birmingham — The Wynfrey Hotel while she competes in the Miss Alabama competition. Interviews are scheduled to take place at the Tutwiler Hotel in Birmingham, and preliminary competitions will be at the Alabama Theatre on Thursday and Friday.

McTier said she will give an on-stage interview and discuss her battle against food insecurity Thursday, along with the evening gown competition. She will perform her talent Friday night.

On Saturday night, the top 12 will be named and narrowed down to the top five contestants before Miss Alabama 2021 is selected.

The Miss Alabama competition on Tuesday night at 5:30 p.m. plans to introduce all the contestants on the Miss Alabama Facebook page and announce the winner of the community service award and science, technology, engineering and math scholarship recipients, Bentley said.

For more information and to see photos of all the contestants in Miss Alabama 2021, visit missalabama.com.