The Women Who Would Be Queen Face Key Rose Parade Round

Yes, there is stately tradition. There is the opportunity for self-improvement and the chance for a blue-chip resume stuffer.

But 17-year-old Meka Mills had a simpler reason Thursday for hoping she’d be picked as a member of the Royal Court for the 108th Rose Parade.

“It’s the glamour,” declared Mills as she and 30 other finalists waited to be called into the final interviews to determine who will be named to the seven-member Royal Court on Monday.

One of those seven will be named Rose Queen on Oct. 22, capping a monthlong selection process that began with 764 hopefuls.

For the 31 finalists assembled at the Tournament of Roses headquarters in Pasadena, the day of do-or-die interviewing mixed soaring dreams with nail-biting dread.

“You can feel the tension. Either their life changes forever or they go back to school,” said Nicole Bangar, a member of the 1994 Royal Court who spent much of the afternoon soothing jittery candidates.

In the painting-draped waiting room, the young women swapped small talk about their schools, traded polite compliments--and occasionally envisioned themselves on a Rose Parade float before the eyes of millions of television viewers.

“Sometimes I think to myself, what if I’m on TV?” said Mills, a senior at John Marshall Fundamental High School who hopes someday to be a pediatrician.

Others fretted about the questions they’d be asked when called before a long table of 10 judges.

One girl jokingly raised the possibility of the loathed Bosnia query. Another worried about the what-would-you-do-as-president test.

Traci Barbadian, a 17-year-old from San Marino, feared “one that would involve deep thought.”

Alexis Contopulos, who made it to the final round last year, flipped through Bangar’s 1994 scrapbook and confided that she didn’t feel quite as sure of her answers this time around. Contopulos said she was “very pessimistic” about her chances for making the Royal Court.

But also very determined.

“If I don’t make it this year, I will try again next year,” Contopulos said, running her hand over the scrapbook. “I have nothing to lose.”