Here she is: Miss Idaho

Sometime between evening gown practice and swimsuit rehearsal, Tracey Renee Brown paused for a moment Wednesday to reflect on the whirlwind that is the Miss America Pageant.

“It’s surreal,” said Brown, 19, the Post Falls woman who’s representing Idaho this week in the venerable contest.

“Last night before we went on stage, the girls were all saying, ‘Can you believe we are actually going to compete for the title of Miss America?’ “

For Brown, who was crowned Miss Idaho 2005, simply joining 51 fellow contestants at the pageant’s new site in Las Vegas is fulfillment of a childhood dream. Everywhere she looks this week, billboards and television screens are filled with pageant images, Brown said. Everywhere the young women go, throngs of people stop to cheer.

“The publicity has been incredible here,” Brown said.

The pinnacle of excitement will come Saturday, when the final night of competition will be broadcast nationally on Country Music Television (CMT) from 5 to 7 p.m. PST. That’s a change from previous years, when the pageant was hosted in its longtime home, Atlantic City, N.J., and aired on network television.

Years of declining ratings led ABC to drop the pageant in 2004, forcing officials to search for a new television home. The Aladdin Resort & Casino stepped in with a physical site, and CMT officials stepped up with a television venue.

Wherever the pageant is held, Brown is happy to be there. The Post Falls High School graduate and Whitworth College sophomore can describe her olive-green silk evening gown in rhinestoned detail. And she’s excited about her talent presentation, a ballet en pointe performed to John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“It’s very patriotic and energetic,” Brown said.

But she said she’s most excited for the opportunity to discuss her platform issue: breast cancer awareness, education, support and research.

“The interview is my favorite portion,” said Brown, who was inspired by her mother’s battle with breast cancer. In 2004, she organized a Relay for Life fund-raising event at Whitworth, generating nearly $10,000 for the American Cancer Society. She’s working to create an Idaho license plate focusing on breast cancer with proceeds to benefit prevention and education.

Brown is one of two daughters of Bill and Debbie Brown of Post Falls. Both Tracey and her older sister, Shannon, have competed in pageants.

“It’s just an amazing thing to have your little girl be in Miss America,” her father said.

So far, Tracey Brown, a former Idaho Junior Miss, estimates she has won about $20,000 in scholarships through the competitions.

Brown, who’s a straight-A student majoring in communication and business, would like to parlay any pageant success into a career as a news anchor for a national television network.

First, though, she has to get through the rest of this week. Brown said she hasn’t been particularly nervous, even when she realized that the stage on which she’ll dance isn’t designed for toe shoes.

“It’s a little slippery,” Brown said. “It’s not a dance floor, but it will be fine.”