Kadie Latimer doesn’t give off the air of a beauty pageant participant.

Most of the day, she wears workout clothes with her hair tied back into a ponytail and no makeup. This laid-back nature is what she says made her an easy fit for the Miss USA pageant in Baton Rouge, La.

Latimer, 23, who was named Miss Montana in September 2013, competed against 50 other women in the national pageant June 8.

“We were treated like queens down there,” she said. “My goal was to get in the top 20. Montana had never made the top 20 before, so I was calm and relaxed.”

A 2009 Glacier High School graduate, Latimer was born in Libby and grew up in Kalispell, playing volleyball, basketball, track and softball during high school. She got a medical assistant degree from Flathead Valley Community College and hopes to return to a position she held at Whitefish Plastic Surgery & Med Spa.

Although she didn’t score in the top 20 at the pageant, Latimer made some close friends.

“The eastern girls and I really seemed to click,” she said. “Most of the girls kind of flocked to Miss Idaho and I because we were so laid back. I might be going out to visit Miss New York soon.”

The Miss Montana pageant was Latimer’s first ever. 

On her personalized Miss USA page, she said it was her first competition that didn’t involve a ball. Her father coached girls basketball for 25 years and all the Latimer girls are big-time athletes.

Her first pageant will also be her last, at least for a while.

“I was hesitant to join Miss Montana. You hear all these stories and have doubts,” Latimer said. “It’s a lot of stress. You have to really know yourself.”

To prepare for the pageant, which focuses largely on fitness, Latimer trained twice a day and went on a strict diet, eating healthy foods every two hours and spending good amounts of time on food preparation. A pageant coach from Texas would call her once a week and put her “on the hot seat” with interview questions.

Her family came to Louisiana with her, including her mom and dad, sisters Chaeney, 26, and Paige, 21, grandmothers, an aunt, cousins, a friend and boyfriend. They made “Team Montana” T-shirts to wear in Cajun country.

The event was two weeks long, and Latimer said the first week was solely appearances.

“We went to tea parties, the governor’s mansion and plantations,” she said. “The second week was all rehearsals. The rehearsals went from 6 a.m. to 11:30 at night.”

Latimer had taken an interest in skin care from her own experience with psoriasis and her work as an esthetician in Whitefish, but two full weeks of constant hair work, makeup and other duties were a little outside her comfort zone.

“The hardest part was the lack of sleep,” she said. “And I had to be in heels all day. There’s this photo I took where all the other girls were in heels and I was wearing flats.”

Since she is 5 foot, 10 inches tall, that may have brought her down to everyone else’s level, but even the infighting that comes with pageantry didn’t bother her. The relaxed Montana girl stayed away from unnecessary drama and focused more on the delicious Cajun food.

Her father, Dennis Latimer, said his favorite part of the trip was the food.

“I sampled as much as I could,” he said. “The whole trip was fabulous. It’s so hard being a parent with this stuff, but she is amazing.”

As for Kadie, alligator poppers became her favorite food by far. 

That helped take some of the stress off of having to be prepared with 40 complete outfits for any occasion. She said without the sponsorship of boutiques in the Flathead, she never would have been able to afford the competition.

Latimer’s gown was in the $5,000 range.

While not strutting her stuff on stage, she spends a lot of time at the gym and working at Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish while preparing for work as a medical assistant. 

Modeling offers and other opportunities (including one for a popular reality game show) have been rolling in, and Latimer is ecstatic with the support the community and her family have given her.

“Now it’s just coming off that high from being treated like royalty,” she said. “We were escorted downtown in trolleys with a police escort. It was totally worth it in the end.”

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.