Alaina’s

“It’s hard to believe this is real! Day one!”

— Alaina Bergsma, via Twitter,on May 18 upon arriving in Las Vegas

Alaina Bergsma is beside herself. Almost literally.

She’s half all-American volleyball player, half Miss USA contestant.

She’s leaping high against the net one day, smashing another “kill” down upon her opponents, and the next she’s walking upon a stage in 3-inch high heels that make her 6-foot-6.

But here’s the dilemma: Achieve a goal that really hasn’t been a goal all that long but is still a this-is-so-unreal dream, and the University of Oregon’s top player misses her senior season this fall, dealing a big blow to the Ducks’ Pac-12 title hopes and a sixth NCAA Tournament appearance in seven years.

Not that anyone’s probably feeling too sorry for her. After all, is it really that big of a dilemma? Missing your senior season versus … being named Miss USA?

“Not really,” said the 22-year-old Bergsma, who as Miss Oregon USA has been competing the past couple of weeks against 50 other young women (yes, there’s a Miss District of Columbia) in the Miss USA Competition that culminates with tonight’s nationally televised beauty pageant from the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

“I know if I were to win, I’d petition to play the following year. However, being a redshirt, it would be a possibly tough sell,” said Bergsma, who hails from Chandler, Ariz., but qualified to compete in the Miss Oregon USA contest (in which she beat out the other 45 contestants) in Portland last November. She had been named Miss Lane County USA in April 2011, and qualified because she was a full-time college student here and had been a state resident for at least six months.

NCAA athletes sometimes petition for an extra season as a medical redshirt because of injury, but Bergsma already sat out her true freshman season at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, before playing as a redshirt freshman there in 2009 and then transferring to the UO in 2010. Asking for an extra season because your final year was interrupted by being named Miss USA would seem a tough sell, indeed.

Jim Moore, the UO volleyball coach, is hardly worried that he could lose his team captain and much-feared outside hitter, who at 6-foot-3 appears to be the tallest Miss USA contestant in the pageant’s 60-year history, an inch taller than 2010 Miss Washington USA, Tracy Turnure. Bergsma is even taller than both her siblings, older brothers Matt (6-2 1/2) and Ben (6-1).

“In terms of experience, she probably has the least amount of anyone (in the competition),” Moore said. “I’m not really concerned about that.”

If Moore isn’t worried, though, then how does he know that four of the 51 contestants are “Ford models,” as he mentioned in brushing aside the possibility that Bergsma will be the one left standing tonight when the first runner-up is announced? Has he scouted the competition, checked the profiles of the other 50 contestants at www.missusa.com, as many of Bergsma’s teammates have done?

Not even a little worried?

“It’s not even something I’ve run through my head,” Moore said.

Lauren Plum, Bergsma’s best friend on the UO volleyball team, has run it through her head, though.

“Oh my God, we need her next year so bad,” Plum said. “She’s such a good hitter. We’ve just got to have her.”

So, like Moore and the rest of Bergsma’s teammates, Plum is hoping for an impressive showing tonight — at least placing Bergsma in the semifinals as one of the top 16 contestants so they can watch her in the swimsuit and evening gown competition; maybe even a top five finish, so they can stare wide-eyed at the screen and sweat it out along with Bergsma as she answers what Miss Oregon USA Director Carol Lukens — who will be there rooting for Bergsma in person tonight — calls: “The dreaded on-stage interview question.”

Questions such as: Do you think gay marriage should be legalized everywhere?

“I think marriage is a sacrament that should be practiced within people’s religions. However, I do believe the gay and lesbian community should have some form of legal rights. Whether that’s a domestic partnership, I think they should have the same legal opportunities as a married man and woman have.”

— Bergsma, responding to a question thrown at her in a Register-Guard interview last month

The interview question is the final hurdle for the five finalists, and must be answered in front of the celebrity judges, that big Vegas crowd and millions watching on TV. It is ultimately what determines the winner. Crack under pressure and you’re done.

Of course, this could be a whole lot of wishful thinking. If Bergsma hasn’t made the semifinals then she will appear only in a couple of on-stage routines tonight with the rest of the contestants in the telecast that will be viewed live by the Eastern half of the nation first at 6 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and then shown to West Coast viewers on a three-hour tape delay at 9 p.m.

Preliminary judges have already voted, based on swimsuit, evening gown and interview competitions held Wednesday in Las Vegas. The 15 contestants with the top scores make the semifinals, along with 16th semifinalists chosen by a first-ever online vote of fans.

Making it to the semifinals is a “crapshoot,” said Lukens, 68, of Bend, who selected Bergsma as Miss Lane County USA last year based on her application that included photographs and an in-person interview.

“There are so many talented girls,” Lukens said, whose history with beauty pageants began in the Miss America system when she competed for the Miss Oregon title as Miss Portland in the mid-1960s.

“But if she gets in, she’s a strong competitor. If she gets in, I think she’ll go all the way to the top five.”

What do you think is the most important discovery of the last century, and why?

“ … Most … important … discovery … Would that be an invention? I think the greatest invention in the last century would be the Internet. It not only has made our entire world more globalized, and globalizes our economy, it gives instant access to all kinds of information, as well as getting in contact with people.”

The Miss USA Competition began in 1952 in conjunction with its sister pageant, the Miss Universe Competition. It was started by Catalina Swimwear after the 1951 Miss America winner, Yolande Betbeze of Alabama, refused to pose for publicity photos in a swimsuit, causing Catalina to pull its sponsorship of the Miss America contest and start its own pageant that has been owned by Donald Trump since 1996, according to the missusa.com website.

While the Miss USA and Miss Universe ventures are for-profit operations overseen by Trump’s vast business empire, the Miss America pageant, begun in Atlantic City, N.J., in 1921, remains a non-profit organization that provides educational and professional scholarships to contestants.

What does the Miss USA winner get? She gets to live in the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan and have Miss Universe as a roommate, said Bergsma, who was encouraged to apply for Miss Lane County last year by her close friend and former high school teammate, Kelsey Moore, who was Miss Texas USA in 2010 and played volleyball at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Miss USA also competes in the Miss Universe pageant this fall, along with performing charity work and being an advocate for fighting breast and ovarian cancer, among other things, during her one-year reign, Bergsma said.

The Miss America contest — perhaps best known as the pageant in which its late host, Bert Parks, sang, “There she is, Miss America …” from 1955 to 1979 — differs from the Miss USA contest in that the former includes a talent portion in which contestants are judged on singing, dancing, playing an instrument and the like.

The Miss USA contest is a much sexier contest with a greater emphasis on fitness and bronzed-like bodies.

And while Trump has taken the Miss USA and Miss Universe competitions to new heights in recent years, the Miss America contest found itself floundering in popularity, according to various news reports and websites, as it lost its ABC telecast after 2004, ending up on such cable channels as the Country Music Television and The Learning Channel. ABC began televising the Miss America pageant again in 2011.

“They’re both really good (competitions),” Lukens said. But the Miss USA contest has benefitted from greater visibility since Trump bought it and has taken a more modern approach to beauty contests, featuring more athletic types of contestants such as Bergsma, she said. In fact, Bergsma is not the only all-American athlete in the competition, according to the contestants’ profiles at missusa.com.

Miss Maryland USA, Nana Meriweather, 27, was a two-time all-American volleyball player at UCLA in 2005 and 2006 and the Collegiate Volleyball Update Player of the Year in 2006, according to her online profile. She also played professionally in Puerto Rico after graduation.

If you were shopping with a friend and she shoplifted, what would you do?

“Hopefully I don’t have any friends that would shoplift. Especially when I was with them. However, if they did, I would encourage her to return it. And if she didn’t, I would probably feel guilty enough I’d go pay for it.”

Although Bergsma, a sports marketing business major with a 3.7 GPA, likened pageant competition to the challenge and intensity of playing Division I NCAA sports, she said that it can’t possibly be any more nerve-racking than playing the Washington Huskies at McArthur Court in the fall of 2010, her first Pac-10 weekend as a Duck; or giving a speech in front of hundreds of fellow UO athletes, Athletic Department officials and big-time donors at the Ford Alumni Center.

“The most nervous I’ve ever been is before a volleyball match,” said the brown-eyed Bergsma, referring to that Sept. 25, 2010 match against UW, in which the Ducks beat the 7th-ranked Huskies as Bergsma led the way with 23 points and 21 kills.

In the six-decade history of the Miss USA Competition, no Miss Oregon has ever won. Katie Harman of Gresham is the only Miss Oregon to win the Miss America pageant, in 2002.

The odds, obviously, are stacked against Bergsma, who hopes to play volleyball professionally after she graduates this fall.

“Your son has a better chance of playing in the NFL than your daughter does of being Miss USA,” Lukens said, before adding: “I think Oregon has the best chance they’ve had in years. And if Alaina wins, I think you’ll see her on the cover of Sports Illustrated and other magazines. She looks the part. She’s an all-American athlete with a great scholastic record and a true beauty.

If Bergsma finds herself on that stage tonight as one of the five finalists, will she have the poise to separate herself from the others and answer that question flawlessly?

In your view, what is the biggest problem facing our educational system today?

“I think the biggest problem facing our education system is really the financial side of it. Right now, we’re having a hard time hiring teachers and making our schools where our kids want to be. And I think a lot of it comes down to the budgets. There are so many educational programs in the country operating at a deficit. I think if we can figure out how to make our educational system not profitable, but at least sustainable, that it comes down to the finances. That is where the real problem is.”

Lukens advice?

“Answer it,” she said. “And listen to the question. No canned answers. And make it as light as possible; just a heartfelt response.”

Bergsma said she has been preparing since late November, since winning the Miss Oregon USA contest as the majority of her teammates, who had poked endless fun at her, cheered her on. She spent most of the spring walking around campus in her size 12 heels. She went through endless rounds of interview questions with Lukens and with friends.

“I’ve probably watched more news recently than ever before in my life,” Bergsma said.

And she prepared just like she would for a volleyball match.

“You check them out, you scout them, and then it’s like, ‘OK, what do I need to get done?’” she said of facing her opponents in Las Vegas.

“I want to prove that you can be an amazing student-athlete and get the education and the athletics and still be a beautiful woman,” Bergsma said. “I have the values and the morals and can be a really great role model to girls. And that’s why I want to be Miss USA.”

Mark Baker is The Register-Guard’s features editor. Reach him at 541-338-2374 or [email protected].