SAN JOSE, Calif. – San José State's Andreea Dragoi won the 2022 Miss California U.S. Nation Pageant crown on August 28. She qualified for the Miss U.S. Nation Beauty Pageant, a national competition where she will compete against different beauty pageant winners across the country in Washington, D.C. in October 2022. Prior to winning Miss California, she had won the Miss San Jose U.S. Nation Pageant earlier this year.
HOW IT BEGAN
It's 4 a.m. on Saturday, Aug 27 and Dragoi's alarm is sounding. This is nothing new for the sophomore swimmer at San José State. She is accustomed to the early morning practices but this morning is different.
In two hours, Andreea will be on a plane to LAX. On top of being a Kinesiology major at SJSU and one of 11 swimmers to qualify for the CSCAA National Invitational Championships for the Spartans, Dragoi is a beauty queen.
She already holds the title of Ms. San Jose and is on the one-hour flight to represent her new found home in Los Angeles at the Miss California US Nation Pageant.
Dragoi is what the pageant is looking for. As Miss U.S. Nation Pageants Managing Partner Nora Marvilli said, "We combine everything. We want role models. When you make a recipe for something delicious, you need to put all the ingredients together."
What are the ingredients that make Andreea the perfect recipe for the Miss US Nation Pageants?
TRIPLE THREAT
Dragoi excels in three avenues of life, school, athletics and modeling. Andreea was always told that she wouldn't be able to accomplish all three but she is too strong and competitive to listen. She qualified at the European Junior Championships and World Cup in 2019, she did really well on her end of high school exams, allowing her to come to San José State all while parlaying a blossoming modeling career in her native Romania into two pageant titles in her new home.
PERSEVERANCE
Andreea has overcome significant adversity to continue her stellar swimming career. In 2019 in Romania, her knee cap became dislocated. She snapped it back into place and was rushed to the hospital. In what she describes as the worst night ever.
With her knee fully recovered, Dragoi moves to San Jose and is getting familiar with life in her new country. She is grabbing for something from her desk in her dorm room and she bangs her left knee on the leg of her bed. It happened again. This time on her other knee, her stronger knee.
She felt dejected watching her teammates practice while she had to sit in the stands. After she got word that her ACL was only partially torn, she gained hope. She worked tirelessly in the physical therapy room, with seemingly endless exercises to rehabilitate her ACL. In just three weeks she was back in the pool, getting back to what she loves.
Dragoi has turned this set back into a passion, focusing her studies on rehabilitation sciences to hopefully help others facing similar challenges overcoming injuries in the future, opening her own business to help athletes to recover and focus on their well-being.
It is a source of tremendous pride for Dragoi to persevere and now pave the way as a STEM woman, "It makes me happy and feel powerful to be a STEM woman. I hope I can inspire other women to pursue careers in STEM and know that the field is for everyone."
ROLE MODEL
The Romanian native realized the impact she can have during a visit to an orphanage in Bucharest. She donated her clothes, food and time to the orphans living there. While she gave to them, what the orphans gave back to Andreea was far more profound. As they ran up to her, hugging her, she realized the impact she can have on other lives. It was a day of profound emotion and the catalyst for her to want to help people.
"It is very important to believe in themselves," Dragoi said of the advice she would give to a younger person aspiring to follow in her lead. "Never give up on the challenges that you are facing in life because all dreams can become reality. I have competed in two pageants, I qualified for European Junior Championships and the World Cup and I did really well on my IB exams. It is all possible."
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