enlarge Photo courtesy StewartSmithPhotography.com

Ashley Underwood’s confidence and poise helped her find success as a basketball player at Cony High and UMaine. Those same qualities still shine through in a new role: Miss Maine.

Before the competition resumed, Chuck Underwood turned to his daughter. He was a former star athlete, an ex-Marine and high school coach, and he had something to say.

Be confident, he told her. Be aggressive. Attack.

"He was trying to give me a basketball pep talk," said Ashley Underwood, "and I was at a beauty pageant."

She smiled that Sunday last month and in her own way did exactly what her father suggested. The confidence honed by tough situations in games with Cony High, the University of Maine and a pro team in Switzerland paid off when she walked the runway at the Eastland Park Hotel and answered judges' questions.

Ashley Underwood is the new Miss Maine.

"Did I want to win this? Definitely. It's a competition and I'm a competitive person. I want female athletes to know it's OK to dress up, to be glamorous."

In today's world of Title IX and other calls for gender equality, beauty pageants tend to be dismissed as a throwback to a more sexist time. You hear the name of the new titleholder and unless she's the girl next door, you forget her an hour later.

Underwood, 23, is different. You knew the name long before the sash was draped over her shoulder and the tiara went on her head.

She was the high school basketball star and the underclassman on the last University of Maine women's basketball team to reach the NCAA tournament. That was in 2004, when she was the 3-point shooter entering games off the bench. The next season she was a starter and quickly became a leader. She reached 1,000 points both at Cony and at Maine.

Mentally tough and eager to try anything, she was the tomboy in the Underwood family photo albums. She'd tag along with older brother Justin and their father to basketball practices and games. She'd watch older sister Lindsey enter beauty pageants.

Her family owned successful seafood restaurants in Winslow and Fairfield before turning to a 23-acre berry farm in Benton. She understands what work ethic means.

Underwood freely admits that among her Maine teammates, she was the one most likely to be watching a pageant on television. She told a few of her intention to enter the Miss Maine competition. She told more afterward.

"I got so much support and phone calls, from Bracey (Barker) and Katie (Whittier, now playing in Italy) and Julie Veilleux (now coaching with Stefanie Pemper at the Naval Academy)."

Missy Traversi said she'll be in Las Vegas over a long weekend in April for the Miss USA competition. Abby Schrader plans to be there.

Underwood laughs easily. She returns to the gym Monday to train for the next step and juggle that with the rest of her life. She graduated from Maine with a nursing degree and has a job in SAD 46, shuttling between elementary schools in Fairfield and Albion and Lawrence High School. She's a school nurse.

No, the boys aren't lining the corridor outside her office wondering about their flushed faces or rapid heartbeats.

Yes, there have been appearances as Miss Maine, including one at the Portland Pirates' game in Orono at Alfond Arena last week. More will follow. But there's still a certain anonymity when she walks through malls or airports.

"People may recognize me as the basketball player, and that's great because I'll never want to turn my back on that. It was an important part of my life."

On that Sunday after Thanksgiving, more than two dozen family members sat in the Eastland Park ballroom. Justin, the former St. Joseph's player, jumped on his chair, his fist pumping the air. Terry Underwood hugged her daughter and found herself repeating, 'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.'

"Ashley looked at me and said, 'Mom, it's only a beauty pageant,'" said Terry Underwood. "She was right."

And Dad, who earned more than his share of technical fouls as coach of the Winslow High boys nearly 25 years ago?

"I was calm, cool as a cucumber,"...