For a moment, when Hailey Mack was named Miss Delaware 2025, it felt unreal.
“I couldn’t even comprehend what just happened. I was just in shock. That was my first time competing in Miss Delaware. I was not expecting it at all,” the 18-year-old Ocean View resident and 2024 Indian River High School graduate said a few days after the June 14 event in Newark.
“The first runner-up, her name is Becca. I gave her a hug, and she told me to go take my walk because I deserved it, and she was so sweet. I took my first walk around the stage as Miss Delaware. I walked around the stage and got to wave at everybody,” she said.
Her mother and stepfather, Jennifer and Jamie Bland of Ocean View, and father and stepmother, Brian Mack and Angela Deegan, were in the audience, applauding and cheering, along with her sisters, 15-year-old Taylor Mack and 10-year-old Emma Bland.
“It was such a surreal moment,” said Mack — an employee at Fin & Claw seafood market in Ocean View, where she is at the front desk and works on the webpage design and social media — as she congratulated Avery Martinenza, who was named Miss Delaware’s Teen at the same event.
Around Labor Day, Mack will compete for Miss America, but she said the exact date and location haven’t yet been announced.
The competition, she said, had five phases — a private interview, on-stage question, evening gown, talent and fitness, with the interview valued at 30 percent.
She was asked what steps she would take to unify Delaware’s three counties and bring residents together, and she said she would make appearances in all of the counties, “so I could interact with everybody and share experiences, so we could all feel unified as one.”
The on-stage question, valued at 10 percent, was based on community service, and she explained that she wants to encourage STEM studies — science, technology, engineering and math.
Fitness, evening gown and talent were valued at 20 percent each. For the fitness portion, she performed a walking pattern and poses, and her talent was a color-guard routine, spinning flags. She was captain of the color guard in high school.
She plans to study civil engineering and be a structural engineer.
“It’s a big responsibility being Miss Delaware, making sure you’re carrying yourself as a titleholder, representing the state and also preparing for Miss America. I want to represent myself well,” she said, explaining that the Miss America pageant will have the same structure, with five parts.
“I’m a little nervous, but I like talking to people, so I think I’ll be all right,” she said.
“I have always been interested in pageants growing up. I used to watch them on TV, but I never thought it was something somebody in Delaware could get involved in. Two years ago, I was first runner-up (Miss Delaware Teen) and I came back this year,” Mack said, adding that she and her family plan to celebrate both her being named Miss Delaware and her upcoming birthday.
Martinenza, 18, a resident of Newark, said that when she was named Miss Delaware’s Teen, she “started sobbing, and I saw mom in the audience cheering me on as hard as she could.”
Her mother, Katie, was first runner-up in the same contest in 2006, she said, and was in the audience with her father, Brian Martinenza Jr.
Martinenza has two brothers, Easton and Bennett, and a sister, Sutton.
During the interview, she said, she was asked questions about her achievements.
“Most of my answers boiled down to putting myself out there and trying to do all new things in my first semester of college this fall, and in high school trying to do new things. That is how I ended up competing,” she said.
An intern at Biotek Remedys in New Castle, Martinenza plans to study biology and Spanish at Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and pursue a career in genetics.
As Miss Teen Delaware, Martinenza will travel around the state, sometimes with Mack, “and support our sisters.”
“The best part has been all the relationships I made with the girls. Even before the competition, there were such strong connections with the girls, whether you’re fixing each other’s hair or asking for advice. A lot of us are on different paths in life, so we can contribute to each other’s success. I liked having so many people around you, cheering you on,” she said.