PORT NECHES — Kourtney Segura isn’t typically one for high heels and a dress.

Recently named Miss Port Neches 2016, Segura is comfortable in casual attire, playing volleyball at Port Neches-Groves High School and making music.

She competed in the pageant once before, back in the fourth grade but didn’t place.

“I went out with a bang in my senior year,” Segura said. “I just wanted to have fun and not worry about how I looked but how the judges viewed me on stage.”

But there’s more to the reigning queen than the sash and crown. Segura is a member of the National Honor Society, treasurer of the Association of Indian Athletes, peer tutor to a kindergarten class at Woodcrest Elementary School, active participant in Relay for Life for nine years, a volunteer for Buckner’s Foundation of Orphaned Children and has played volleyball at the high school for four years.

She plans to attend Texas State University, where she will major in psychology and minor in music. Psychology has been fascinating to her, she said.

“I’ve always been interested in the way people do things and how the human brain works and makes decisions,” she said.

Music, though, is a major part of her life.

“Music is a big part of my life. My dad started playing guitar before me and I always wanted to be like him,” Segura said of learning guitar at the age of 9. She is also self-taught on the ukulele and piano. “I started guitar at an early age and it took off from there.”

Her mother, Bonita Segura, said Kourtney Segura has an ear for music.

“She can listen to a song two or three times and have it down on the piano,” Bonita Segura said.

Segura is also an artist and is able to paint or draw anything.

“She is a very special child. She’s smart, bright, driven,” Bonita Segura said. “She’s a true role model.”

Kourtney Segura is the daughter of Kent and Bonita Segura.

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