Colette Moran has a beautiful blog post about high-school-homecoming queens.

Like me, she went to an all-girls high school, so the whole homecoming phenomenon is a bit foreign to us. But Moran has daughters in public high school now — and one of them is dating a boy who is a homecoming-king contender — so this world is becoming more familiar in her household, giving her a new-found appreciation of it all.

But you don’t have to have a king or queen in your home to appreciate the young women she points to. They model and inspire royal character.

Meet Brianna Amat, soccer star and queen, who knows “you don’t have to compromise your talents or your femininity.”

And meet Mariah Slick, 2011 Azle High School homecoming queen. Mariah is also an athlete, bursting with school spirit. She was also born with Down Syndrome. The odds are statistically high that Mariah wouldn’t have gotten a chance to live beyond an initial pre-natal diagnosis. Her school sounds plenty happy she did.

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Mrs. Slick tells a local reporter: “For the kids in the school to love Mariah and nominate her, I feel so blessed and so honored.”

The choice Mariah’s parents made to welcome their daughter into the world is a blessing to everyone who clicks on her homecoming story.