BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Opelika High School named the 2026 Mr. OHS, Titus Elliott, and Miss OHS, Blakely Parrish, a March 1 competition. Mr. and Miss OHS competed for the title during their junior year and represent the school during their senior year as ambassadors.
Hannah Holladay, English department chair and Emissary and National Honor Society advisor, said the titles of Mr. and Miss OHS have grown to help support students through higher education with a scholarship as well as present them with opportunities to develop skills that will help them in leadership situations.
“In the past, it was very much just a pageant,” she said. “So we started thinking about what we can do to make this have a little more impact on the whole student body, make it a little more meaningful. So we changed it into a scholarship competition, where instead of having seniors competing for a title that they would only have for a couple of weeks left in school, juniors would be competing for the title to represent their school as Mr. and Miss OHS throughout their senior year. So with that process, we seek juniors with a positive discipline record, strong academics, who are involved in different areas of their school and can represent a wide, diverse part of the school body, not just a smaller group of people.”
Holladay said the day includes interviews where judges review personal resumes from the competitors, an onstage portion with formal wear and casual wear and opportunities to answer questions on-stage about the students’ experiences, values and how they would represent the school as Mr. or Miss OHS.
Mr. OHS Titus Elliott and Miss OHS Blakely Parrish shared what led them to compete for the title and their excitement for the opportunities the experience will provide.
“I didn’t know a lot about [the competiton], but Ms. Holladay handed me a piece of paper and was like, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll do that,’” Elliott said. “But then [when] I started reading more about it and doing my research, and I was like, ‘Oh, this can be a really good opportunity for me.”
“I’ve participated in [the competition during] my freshman and sophomore years, competing for the class title,” Parrish said. “I felt like every time, I gained a lot of really valuable experience just simply from being on stage, learning how to think through a question, provide a thoughtful answer and just be more confident with myself, the way I’m carrying myself, speaking into a microphone, to judges and in front of people. I felt like there were a lot of really awesome experiences to be gained, which really encouraged me to continue participating my junior year to compete for the title of Miss.”
As members of student clubs and participants in extracurricular activities, Elliott and Parrish said their experiences at OHS have created community and passion in them for both their activities and their school.
“I’m involved in theater here,” Elliott said. “That’s what I’ve really been involved in since freshman year. That’s where I found my place; it’s been a lot of fun, and that’s helped me grow a lot. I think it really did prepare me for this competition in a lot of ways, because of all of the on-stage stuff. I feel like I would have been a lot more stressed and a lot less out there if I hadn’t joined theater. With that, I really like to make progress within my community. If I see something and I’m like, ‘This is not good,’ I’m going to say something, I’m not just gonna let it pass by. And I think that this gives me the opportunity to have a platform to say something, to point things out, and say, ‘Hey, we could improve this.’”
“I’ve cheered since seventh grade, so I’ve been a member of the middle school, junior varsity and now the varsity team,” Parrish said. “It’s been really special for me. I’ve met a lot of my best friends through that and it’s been really fun, because it’s an opportunity to get to represent the school… I love telling people about what Opelika has meant to me, because I’ve really had an incredible experience during my time at the high school, and I still have things to look forward to. So, I’m just really excited to be able to share that with people coming in as freshmen, or people who may not know about Opelika, just because I feel like I have so much to share, because I’ve had such a great experience here.”
After graduation, Elliott said he is interested in studying architecture and is considering attending the University of Southern California and the University of San Francisco, while Parrish said she is planning to attend Auburn University to study marketing.
Through their experiences as Mr. and Miss OHS, Parrish and Elliott said they believe the leadership and communication skills they will learn will help them as they further their education and beyond into their careers.
“With interviewing or speaking in front of people, the only way to get better at it is to continue doing it,” Parrish said. “I feel like I’ve really seen that play out through my time being involved with the Miss OHS Pageant. I feel like it’s just been really helpful to learn what it looks like to sit down and prepare for an interview when you don’t always know the questions beforehand. Because it’s really important to be able to stay true to what you believe, but also think on your feet, be able to respond quickly and have well-constructed answers.”
“I think that it really boosts leadership skills, because I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself to be very outgoing, where I’m going to be like, ‘Come on guys, let’s do a thing.’ But I think that this is going to help me get to the point where I can be more like that, where I can rally people to get to a larger goal,” Elliott said.
With Parrish competing against 12 other candidates for Miss OHS and Elliott competing against five candidates for Mr. OHS, Holladay said the crowned winners represent the skills and passion valued by OHS in student leaders.
“There were a ton of incredible candidates this year,” she said. “I do none of the [selection] process. We do have an outside set of judges that come in to select, because it was very competitive, and we are very proud of the two representatives we have. We told the judges to look for students who genuinely care about their school, who genuinely know how to hold and carry themselves and positively represent their school. We talked about just the values of Opelika that we’re very community-driven, and we’re very much focused on building each other up, as opposed to letting ourselves be the shining light. It is very clear that both of these students are not focusing on themselves, but on how they can make their school a better place.”
