Post’s Junior Reporters Tackle Teen Contest

By SOPHIE HERRON and LILY PARLANE | Junior Reporters

We went to the 2015 Mr. & Miss Palisades Teen Contest at Palisades High School and it was pretty fancy. There was a blue carpet at the entrance, blue lighting and music so loud my chest pounded. There was a stand with cookies from Cookie Good and some of the amazing flavors were birthday cake, sugar, red velvet, and s’mores. Delicious!

There was a video about past Mr. & Miss Palisades. Then a group called the Filharmonic, an all Filipino-American a cappella, group sang Happy, a Michael Jackson song and Uptown Funk.
The judges sat at two tables up near the stage. The awards for the two winners were a free year of food at Palisades Garden Cafe, a ride in the Fourth of July Parade and $2,000.
There were 14 contestants, six boys and eight girls. The show started and the girls had a lot of talent! Zoe Dutton danced with a hula hoop, Sophia Eberlein wrote and sang her original song about the Palisades, Audrey Kaller and Danika Masi sang, Cleo Hoffman showed her ceramics, Makayla Michelini did archery, Kimara Velez danced and Shaler Williams did karate.
The boys were great too! Noah Alcus, Gabriel Galef and Algimantas (Algis) Leitzinger sang songs, Daniel Gottesman sang and played piano, Brett Schneid told a comedian story, and Evan Epstein played the piano. Everyone was great!
Then all the contestants were asked questions. For example: What superhero power would you want to have? What magazine would you like to be on the cover of? What kind of potato chip flavor would you invent? Would you rather live without your car or your cell phone? They also talked about their interests and goals for the future. The answers were all smart and funny.
After the show was over, the audience voted on a piece of paper. They counted our votes and gave them to the judges while the Fancy Feet dancers performed. Then the winners were announced! Evan Epstein and Kimara Velez were the runners up! The winners were Daniel Gottesman and Danika Masi.
We want to say congratulations to everyone! We think they all deserved to win!
We interviewed some of the contestants afterward. Gottesman said when he won he felt it was “amazing,” and that he found the contest “exciting.”
Sophie Eberlein said she hoped to perform her song about the Palisades at places like the fireworks show at Pali High on the Fourth of July. We hope she does!