Miss Kansas, Angelea Busby of Lenexa, has a lot more than evening gowns, swimsuits and interviews on her mind as she prepares for Saturday's Miss America pageant.

Hurricane Isabel threatens to crash the party.

"We've got the Coast Guard and the Navy down here," Busby said in a quickie phone interview from Atlantic City, N.J., earlier this week before rushing off to another rehearsal.

Busby said pageant organizers had prepared evacuation plans and other contingencies, such as bringing in extra food and water for contestants, in case Isabel showed up.

Forecasters predicted the storm could smash into the coast from Virginia to New Jersey with just a slight jog north.

But it would take more than a hurricane to dampen Busby's spirits. She cheerfully reported that contestants were concentrating on the task at hand -- becoming the next Miss America.

Only a few preliminary obstacles stand in Busby's way. Like keeping her baton -- yes, baton -- airborne during the preliminary talent competition.

Like remembering not to gesture too much during her interview, as she's been coached.

And will her "very runway" gown -- a turquoise dream dress from Evening Extraordinaire in Shawnee -- wow the judges in the preliminary evening gown competition?

By the end of today the contestants will have competed in all those precursors. The points they accrue will determine the finalists to compete during Saturday's live broadcast.

Kansas pageant organizers hope that "plain ol' Angelea," as she sometimes refers to herself, will shine through.

Because even though the 21-year-old University of Kansas senior spent the better part of the summer being readied in Pratt, Kan. -- home of the Miss Kansas pageant -- her handlers really had one goal in mind, the same for every Miss Kansas contestant before.

"We have really prided ourselves on letting them be the person they can be," said Marie Hanson, Busby's business manager in Pratt while she reigns.

Busby, the daughter of William and Marilyn Busby of Lenexa, graduated from Shawnee Mission West in 2000. She's one semester shy of finishing her bachelor's degree in journalism at KU, where her brother, Nick, is a freshman. She plans to take a year off from school during her reign.

Just days after winning the state crown June 7, as tradition dictates, she began her Miss America prep time.

The first month she lived in a dorm room at Pratt Community College, then later moved into the basement apartment of a family in Pratt. Everyone on the Miss Kansas board of directors became "her new best friend," Hanson said. "They become her family more or less because she is away from her own family."

Busby was new to the state competition, the first time in 20-some years that a first-timer won.

But she's used to being center stage. Busby has twirled that baton of hers, a rather throwback talent, since she was 3, competing in events that were "kind of mini-pageants," she said. "I made a commitment very young to practice every day of my life. You can't be that level of baton twirler without that level of commitment."

KU hadn't had a featured twirler in nearly 20 years before Busby set her sights on the job. Two years ago, as a sophomore, she talked the school's former band director into letting her perform with the band during football game halftimes.

"I told him just one game, just one chance," she said. "He watched my tape and called me back and said I could have it but that if, at any time, he felt I wasn't complementing the band he could tell me to leave.

"After the first game he told me it was my job for as long as I wanted."

Busby got her first taste of pageants in eighth grade when she and her family lived in Texas. She competed for Miss Teen Texas but lost.

She kept her eye, though, on bigger prizes. Dazzled by the pretty gowns and glamour as a young girl, she wanted the scholarships more as she grew older. Another perk was the chance to talk publicly about depression. Her mother's battle with the illness makes it a personal platform topic.

The weeks of preparation in Pratt brought mock interviews, videotaped so she could watch herself later. That's how she knows to quiet her usually huge gestures as she talks.

She stayed current on news events and, no less important, worked out for nearly three hours every day. She twirled daily too, of course.

"I didn't have a weekend off, and that's OK," she said. "Twenty other women wanted this position, and I was lucky enough to receive it."

On Saturday about 45 relatives will be in the audience as she competes.

And every Miss Kansas has a traveling companion, a Pratt woman whose responsibility is "mostly get her up, get her out the door and be there when she gets back. A lot of handholding," Hanson said.

And likely, a lot of finger-crossing too.