Fitness philosophy: Miss Greek 2006
April 13, 2007
By Clara Good

Miss Greek 2007
When: Sunday, April 15
6 p.m. (doors open at 5)
Where: Meany Hall
Cost: $10

It is an excited Angie Lewis who sits in the cafe in Balmer Hall. She’s still in her training clothes, having just arrived from the gym. She does not seem the least bit tired but instead is bursting with energy.

Lewis, who already holds the title of Miss Greek 2006, recently added another title to her ever-increasing list when she was crowned Miss Cascadia 2007. This means that she is going to compete for the Miss Washington title in the summer.

The winner of the Miss Washington will continue to the Miss America pageant, with a yearlong speaking tour to promote her platform. A platform is a specific community service issue that the contestants dedicate themselves to work on and promote.

Community service and fundraising are not new subjects to Lewis, a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. When she was elected Miss Greek 2006 a year ago, it was after several months of hard work, during which she managed to raise $8,600 for charity.

Lewis’ platform is very clear: She wants to help Americans be happy, healthy and confident through a better lifestyle. She sees three key factors in the struggle to change the trend: increased physical activity, healthier eating habits and improved health literacy. The best way to change things is to start with families and make parents become role models for their children.

In the line of her platform, Lewis is organizing a community service project called “Shape Up, Huskies!” to promote a healthy lifestyle to UW students and faculty.

“The goal is to promote fitness and get people motivated to work out,” she said.

The fundraiser will be a three-day event May 22-24 that Lewis describes as a “philanthropic fitness competition.”

Lewis is especially concerned with the health and fitness of kids. According to her platform statement, childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past two decades, making children enormously susceptible to emotional and mental problems.

Therefore, the money from the fundraiser will go to the not-for-profit organization Girls on the Run, a program dedicated to helping 8-11 year-old-girls attain a healthier lifestyle and greater self-respect through running.

“I’m also serving as a ‘running buddy’ for the Puget Sound chapter of Girls on the Run,” Lewis said. “I will be supporting and coaching the young girls in their quest to finish a 5K in June.”

“Shape up, Huskies!” will have three phases of competition: weight lifting (bench press and squat), a one-mile run and a swimsuit competition. Competitors can enter alone or as a team of two to three people and then split the phases among them. A prize will be given to the top male, female and team participants.

Even if it is a competition, the intent is not to make it too serious.

“The reason for it is to motivate people,” said Lewis. “Swimsuit is a kind of fun way to end it and for people to show off what they worked for.”

It is difficult not to get impressed by Lewis’ focus and forcefulness. When she speaks about her dedication to her platform, it seems that if anyone will succeed in this task, it’s she.

Lewis describes herself as quite competitive.

“But I’m mostly competitive with myself,” she said. “I am very independent.”

She is also dedicated to her own exercise and works out two to four hours a day. Right now she is practicing for her first triathlon in the summer. On the weekends, she works as a personal trainer.

“My goal is to start my own fitness business when I’m 25,” Lewis said.

She is a junior at the UW’s Business School and plans to minor in music, which together with fitness are her greatest interests. She is a singer, dancer, piano player and also a songwriter. Music is what led her to enter in pageants.

“I wanted an outlet to perform,” she said. “It’s the best way to express myself, really.”

In addition to her title as Miss Greek, she was also awarded the Best Talent award at the pageant last April. She performed a medley of Alicia Keys, Mozart and Michael Jackson, where she sang, played the piano and danced.

Since her first pageant, Miss Clarke County in 2005, where she was third runner-up, Lewis has participated in several others. She said the Miss Greek pageant, organized by the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, is special in its focus on community service and fundraising.

“It’s a complete fundraising event,” said Brayden Jessen, one of three co-chairmen responsible for the event. “It’s a philanthropy for the entire Greek system.”

Fundraising is one of the categories of the competition, which also includes philanthropic services and community awareness. The actual pageant features a talent show and a “personality walk,” where contestants enter the stage with attire and music of their own choice. The talent section is very diverse and has included singing and dancing as well as rope jumping and gymnastics.

“The real emphasis is on the talent and fundraising,” Jessen said

Starting in early fall, the women spend months raising funds before the grand finale at the pageant in April. All the money from the event, both what is raised by the women during the year and the yields from ticket sales, goes to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Since the start of the Miss Greek pageant in 1986, more than $100,000 has been donated to the center.

“We are very proud,” Jessen said.

In her fundraising for Miss Greek 2006, Lewis arranged several events, including a date auction and Greek Idol, a version of the national talent competition. All of the women work very hard for their causes.

“[The women] are taking a lot of their time out of their own schedules to do something good,” said John Chen of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity.

Chen was Lewis’ personal coach during the competition. The personal coaches, whom the fraternity assigns to every contestant, assist the women in their work with whatever is needed, such as picking them up after practice or running errands.

Chen describes Lewis as very outgoing and as having an amazing talent.

“She is very confident and not afraid of showing her skills,” he said. “She is a happy person to be around.”

In entering the Miss America program, she certainly had to be sure of herself and her goals. She sees Miss America as something very positive and with a total emphasis on talent. It brings forward educated and talented women, who are people to look up to.

“People are crying out for good, strong women leaders,” Lewis said.

So what if she could choose between becoming the next Miss America or the next American Idol? Lewis hesitates at the question but after some consideration chooses the first.

“Because Miss America gets to spend an entire year promoting her platform,” she said.