CUMBERLAND — A few familiar faces appear on a new reality TV show where Miss America contestants compete for a spot in the top 15 of the Miss America Pageant.

Miss West Virginia Kayla Lynam, a Short Gap resident, and Louise Schlegel, a Silver Spring resident who captured the Miss Allegany County title en route to becoming Miss Maryland, are among the 52 state title holders who appear on TLC’s “Countdown to the Crown.” The show premiered Friday and airs the next two Fridays at 10 p.m.

“It was quite an interesting experience,” said Lynam, “and one I never want to do again. It was a wonderful time to have the bonding time with the girls prior to Miss America. It was much more relaxed as opposed to the competitive time during the pageant. I don’t think I’m a reality TV show star. That’s so out of my realm and my norm.”

The show gives pageant contestants the chance to compete for guaranteed spots in the pageant’s top 15. In the first episode, contestants raced through the Queen Mary ocean liner, which also served as their home for three weeks during filming. Winning teams presented their pageant platform — such as education or healthy habits — to the show’s judges.

Schlegel told The Associated Press she was excited about the prospect of participating in the reality show.

Lynam said this year’s version of the show was different than the last, which was titled “Miss America: Reality Check.” Last year’s focused on making over the competitors, and while there was a makeover day, Lynam said it was not the drastic sort of changes that were done the year before.

Getting used to the cameras, however, took time.

“You kind of got used to it,” Lynam said. “You didn’t notice they were there at times. At first, it was hard to have normal conversations with the cameras around. It wasn’t filming all the time. We actually got to spend a lot of time waiting around while the production company set up the next competition or next scene.”

Lynam said the down time was a great chance to get to know people, especially Schlegel.

One aspect of the experience that Lynam said she knew she wouldn’t want to do again for three weeks was stay aboard the Queen Mary. She said for a short vacation it would be great, especially to hear the ghost tales and myths about the ship, but that there were times when a bed would move without anyone around it.

“I think we were all freaking ourselves out,” Lynam said. “When people are hearing this and feeding it into your heads, well, I’d like to think it was in my head. Not that I’m crazy, but that we weren’t really dealing with ghosts.”

Finished with her reality show experience, Lynam said she is getting a few weeks of down time for herself before she resumes touring as Miss West Virginia, or possibly as Miss America, depending upon the results of the Jan. 24 pageant.

Though she has a break from all of the tours, overall, she said she has enjoyed the chance to promote her own pageant platform FITT habits, “frequency that they exercise, the Intensity of their exercise, the amount of Time that they exercise and the Type of exercise they do,” to schools throughout the area has been “very rewarding.”

Already, she said she has distributed more than 9,000 bookmarks through her public speaking at schools.

Overall, she said she is “excited” about the upcoming Miss America pageant.

Contact Sarah Moses at smoses@times-news.com.