Essi­ba Small

Two days be­fore leav­ing for Las Ve­gas, USA to rep­re­sent T&T at the 59 An­nu­al Miss Uni­verse pageant, La Toya Woods was at the Hy­att Ho­tel for last minute prepa­ra­tions and with­out a mo­ment to spare. The 24-year-old Pt Lisas born lass, who has been on the lo­cal mod­el­ling scene for the last four years, still couldn't be­lieve that the time went by so quick­ly. "I have been prepar­ing for this for the past eight months and now that the time is here I am like 'wow." In those months, Woods went through the fine tun­ing process with a team of ex­perts that in­clud­ed Pe­ter Elias, for­mer fran­chise hold­er of the Miss T&T Uni­verse, Adri­an Ray­mond, Calvin French, Bal­ly, Sonya Moze and Yvonne Pop­plewell. "The woman you see now is dif­fer­ent to the one who won the pageant eight months ago," new fran­chise hold­er Ian An­drew Lee de­clared.

"She is much more pol­ished and con­fi­dent. She is ready."

Re­fer­ring to his ex­pe­ri­ence get­ting the show to­geth­er as a bap­tism of fire, giv­en the amount of work that goes in­to be­ing a fran­chise hold­er, Lee said he was thank­ful for the sup­port he got from his team and spon­sors in­clud­ing Hy­att and Caribbean Air­lines. Gov­ern­ment has al­so been gen­er­ous, pump­ing some $350,000 in­to the fran­chise. "They have helped us with a lot of our bills. I es­pe­cial­ly want to thank Min­is­ters Win­ston Pe­ters and Anil Roberts for recog­nis­ing the work that we do." Qui­et­ly con­fi­dent was how Lee said he felt about Woods' chances at the 23 Au­gust pageant. "We have done all that we should do to en­sure that she is a great chance." There was noth­ing qui­et about Woods' con­fi­dence how­ev­er.

"My friends and fam­i­ly have been telling me that I would win and I to­tal­ly agree," she said with a laugh. "The oth­er 80 girls are com­ing with that kind of think­ing so why not me?" Woods re­called the days when she thought that beau­ty pageants weren't for her. "It was nev­er some­thing I as­pired to even though Pe­ter Elias used to en­cour­age me to try it." For Woods, be­ing a Miss Uni­verse meant that she had to be a whole­some woman. "Yes I was mod­el­ling al­ready, and I think of that as my mi­ni prac­tice for where I am to­day, but I al­so want­ed to at­tain my de­gree (Psy­chol­o­gy) and get se­ri­ous. I mean this is a huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. "Af­ter do­ing my re­search on the pageant and what they were look­ing for, I was fi­nal­ly ready for it."

Asked what she was most look­ing for­ward to at the in­ter­na­tion­al leg of the pageant, Woods said meet­ing the oth­er del­e­gates and singer John Leg­end, who is due to ser­e­nade the del­e­gates. "When I got my itin­er­ary yes­ter­day and saw that he (Leg­end) was go­ing to be there I got so ex­cit­ed be­cause he is my favourite mu­si­cal artiste." She ad­mits that she has been telling friends that she now has an ex­tra goal to make it to the top five "just so John could ser­e­nade me. "I think it is awe­some that I am about to meet with girls who have gone through the same train­ing like I have gone through for this pageant. "I want to tell T&T that it has been ten years since we brought home the crown and I am go­ing to do my best to bring it back home."