Harding’s annual Singsational competition ended a few weeks ago, and it was another successful competition put on by Mrs. Rawlins (the choir director and show choir director), Singers Show Choir, and many others. To celebrate the success of this tradition, Herald staff members wanted to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes of what hosting a show choir competition is like.
One of our Herald staff members interviewed Mrs. Rawlins and asked her a few questions about how much dedication and determination it takes to host one of the largest events held at Harding High School.
A question that was asked for Mrs. Rawlins, how many years has Harding hosted the Sinsational competition? She responded with, “nine years. It started with us…myself, Lisa Ralph, and Dustin [Rawlins] who decided that we really wanted to push our program in a really positive direction.” She also mentioned that it was the same year she founded Singers Xtreme, an all-guys show choir, and both Singers and Singers Xtreme “really put Harding on the map” for competitive show choir.
Mrs. Rawlins was also asked how much money it takes to put the program together, and she stated it costs around $15,000 in startup fees! Another interesting fact, Harding High School does not have an auditorium, so Mrs. Rawlins has to rent a $10,000 stage to set up in the main gym!
Show choir competitions can have many schools participating, such as with Sinsational, this year has had 9 groups at the competition. We’ve been told that last year had the largest number of participating schools, and that amount was 24. Some schools even have middle school show choirs and they compete in a separate competition on the same day.
When hosting a large event such as this, it is inevitable for some weird things to happen. Mrs. Rawlins explained that there are bats that come in from the outside and stay in the main gym. When turning off the gym lights and turning the stage ones, bats would swoop down from the ceiling and head towards the lights. This year, a bat started flying towards students while setting up the stage and a parent had to catch it and safely let it free outside.
Besides the bats that would attack poor students, Singational has many positives for the Marion community. Since Harding’s Sinsational is known as one of the largest competitions in the midwest, many different schools come from many states such as Indiana and West Virginia. This allows money to come into the community since these schools stay in local hotels and eat at local restaurants while participating in the competition.
