Maddie Marchant, a student at ETSU and proud resident of Southwest Virginia, is Miss Virginia 2026.

Marchant’s favorite part of pageantry is the platform it provides to make change. She is passionate about invisible disabilities, using her role as Miss Virginia to propel her invisABILITY service initiative, where she goes into schools and teaches kids to be kind to others, especially those with disabilities.

Contributed/Maddiemarchant.com

Additionally, Marchant works to ensure schools have better cross-contamination practices stemming from her own isolating experience with celiac disease. To further shed light on invisible struggles, she is working on publishing a children’s book, “Puddle’s Path,” about a duck who cannot fly and, on his way to a pond, meets other animals with disabilities.

Marchant had an untraditional path to ETSU, but she is glad she landed here. She began at Southwest Virginia Community College, where she got her associate degree before transferring to Appalachian State University. Just as she was starting her studies at Appalachian State, flooding due to Hurricane Helene made travel to the university impossible, causing her to go virtual. Marchant then decided to transfer to ETSU, where she feels like she finally found where she belongs.

She chose ETSU for its strong media and communication major. She hopes to be a broadcast journalist in the future and aspires to provide rural communities in Appalachia with accurate, unbiased news concerning their local issues.

Marchant’s participation in Miss Virginia has given her several opportunities to highlight Southwest Virginia and Appalachian culture. Her talent is hip-hop clogging, a style of dance fostered in the area through early immigration, primarily Irish. She grew up on a cattle farm in Lebanon, Virginia, and loves both Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee because of their “sense of community.”

Marchant embodies ETSU’s goal of improving “the quality of life of the people of this region.” She is working to make pageantry accessible to all young women in Virginia by adding preliminary competitions in areas of Southwest Virginia that previously lacked them, thereby providing scholarship opportunities.

Outside of school and pageants, Marchant has her own business, Glam by Maddie (@glam.bymaddie), where she provides comprehensive makeover services. Her mom is her biggest role model, not only inspiring her to start the company but also entering and coaching Marchant in pageantry.

Marchant is set to compete in Miss America next week. According to Marchant, her clogging routine is the most fun song she has ever done. Stay tuned to see what she picks.

More of Marchant’s story can be found on Instagram at @missamericava and on her website at maddiemarchant.com.

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