A Southwest Louisiana woman has taken home the honor of being crowned Miss Louisiana 2021.

Julia Claire Williams is a graduate of Kinder High School and University of Louisiana in Monroe. Williams is excited that her win puts the city of Kinder on the map for a reason other than sports.

Julia has been competing in pageants since she was a toddler and as a competitive dancer since the age of six. She attributes her early exposure to the lights of the stage and big time competition for training her for this day.

Williams not only earned the title of Miss Louisiana, but also won $12,500 in scholarships and the opportunity to represent Kinder and Louisiana in the Miss America pageant later this year.

She's currently an emergency room scribe at St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe, but plans to use her scholarship to attend medical school to become a pediatric doctor.

For more on this story, click here.

LOOK: Here are the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

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