Miss America proves you can get there from here

The headline sounds like an airport or college commercial, but it should provide inspiration for any young person facing the future from a hometown like McCook.

Seventeen-year-old Teresa Scanlan also should encourage home school students and parents by being homeschooled in her younger years.

It worked against her a couple years ago, according to Jay Engel, Miss Nebraska co-executive director, when she was judged too mature to even place in the state's Miss Outstanding Teen Pageant.

Now the Scottsbluff High School graduate has reached the top of the pageant game, traveling around the country to do things like ring the NASDAQ bell today and appear on shows like "The View" before returning to Nebraska for a victory tour. She plans to attend a small Christian college, Patrick Henry College in Virginia, after completing her year as Miss America.

Although Scanlan is the youngest Miss America in more than 70 years, she's not the first from Nebraska.

Almost as young at the time she was crowned was Sharon Kay Ritchie, who was born in McCook and grew up in Grand Island before going to Colorado Women's College and becoming Miss America in 1956 at the age of 18. Living in Honolulu and Los Angeles, Ritch lost a son in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The new Miss American should certainly help reinforce the idea that coming from the High Plains doesn't mean your talents and personality can't take you to the top, nor that homeschooling will leave one without the social skills needed to succeed.

Congratulations to the new Miss American, and to future contestants from Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas, work hard, do your best and you might just be the next. Like we said, you can get there from here.