Four high school juniors from Santa Barbara won the Santa Barbara Junior Miss 2009 Scholarship Competition, held earlier this month at the Santa Barbara High Theater. These bright young women will have the opportunity to compete in California’s Junior Miss this summer in Northern California. The local program, chaired by Dr. Judy Dean, awarded more than $20,000 in scholarships.

The winners — Nicole Klobucher of San Marcos High, Rachel Love and Megan Turley of Santa Barbara High, and Sarah Shasberger of Providence Hall — were four of 15 juniors from area high schools who competed in the five categories of the competition: Scholastics (worth 20 percent), Interview & Talent (each 25 percent), and Self Expression & Fitness (each 15 percent). There is no beauty component of the competition.

“Because the competition asks each contestant to reach outside their comfort zone, every person who participates comes away a winner regardless of how many awards or how much money she earns,” said Jackie Rotman, one of last year’s Santa Barbara Junior Misses who went on to win the California Junior Miss competition. Rotman will be competing in the America’s Junior Miss competition in Mobile, Ala., in June. The winner of that competition earns a $50,000 college scholarship.

Headquartered in Mobile, America’s Junior Miss was founded in 1958 and, to date, has awarded more than $80 million in scholarships to teenage girls. More than 700,000 young women from across the nation have participated in Junior Miss programs at the local, state, and national levels. In addition to cash scholarships, Junior Miss participants are eligible for college-granted scholarships from nearly 200 colleges and universities. The organization’s mission is to emphasize education by providing scholarship opportunities to outstanding, college-bound high school girls, and to encourage personal development in all young people.

The Santa Barbara Junior Miss program is one of the strongest in California and has produced a first runner-up or a winner at the state level for four of the last five years.