At St. Charles High, the choir classes got to go compete against other schools to determine who’s best. The rating was 1-5 (1 being worst, 5 being best). The competitions happened on March 11, 2022, during a Friday school day. 

“The choir competitions/festival is where choirs from different schools go to one school to sing for three judges. They get markings on good or bad points, and then go out and do a sight reading test for another judge for points,” junior Katrina Wilfong said.

The choir classes were sent to meet at the buses during the first block to go to the competitions. They arrived back at school around the end of the school day at 2:20. 

“The purpose is to see how high you can get your score and see what you need to fix in the choir,” Wilfong said.

The choir festival does not have an overall winner. It just tests your singing ability and gives you a score. Not only is it a competition, it is a good experience. To have the willpower to sing in front of people and get judged means a lot to a person’s mental state.

“I was a bit nervous but I didn’t think much of the nervous part towards the end,” junior Olivia Helton said. 

As part of the experience students got to listen in to other school’s choir classes. The choir class at SCHS got to see what they would be doing ahead of time which prepared them. 

“Going to the competition was decent, I enjoyed hearing a few other choirs, I guess I would change how bad I did in the sight reading part,” Helton said. 

Sight reading is when a student is measured on how they sing off the notes (do, re, mi, fa, so, etc.). Every note is at a different key and the pitch gets higher and higher as it is sung off. 

“It’s a little nerve racking but I felt like we were all very prepared when it came to the singing portion,” junior Keirissa Waters-Wagner said. “I loved watching the other schools perform. If there is something I could change about the competitions, it would be how we were graded. It would be an overall scale from all schools instead of just ours.”

One senior that went to compete was Macey Hill. She is graduating a year early due to her working hard for that goal. 

“So I am going to be minoring in musical theater so I am required to take some type of musical courses,” senior Macey Hill said. “So I kind of put it in there, I know I want to continue doing choir in my higher education.”

Since COVID hit, the choir competitions have been losing more and more schools that are competing. Without as many schools it makes the whole experience weaker. 

“I felt like it was different then it was freshman year and there weren’t a lot of schools there, which made it feel more fun to have all those different schools competing,” Hill said. “We didn’t do bad or anything.”

Every person in choir has different inspirations for doing choir, let alone be so serious about it to compete against other schools.

“Singing is one of my favorite things and it was there for me at a time when I was at a low point in my life,” Hill said. “My older sister did choir and orchestra, so I did both to be like her and I kind of just stuck with it because I’m good at it.”