On February 16th, 2017, West High School’s most talented students got together to showcase their unique talents. For many students this is the one time of the year that they will come out of their shells and show the rest of the student body their hidden talents. For some this was an incredible experience, but for others it wasn’t such a great encounter.

Sophomore class president, Cyril Boots, and dedicated jazz singer, Michelle Evans, were two of the most anticipated performers of the night. Evans, known for her love of singing, and Boots, known for his outgoing nature, sang a beautifully harmonized duet. “Initially we were gonna do “Stay” by Rihanna because Michelle liked it and she sounded good, but it was not in my key… but, Michelle was learning piano and she played “Imagine” by John Lennon and we were like, “Oh my God this is such a good song” and we decided to do it… well our first song was gonna be “All of Me” by John Legend…and last minute for some weird reason Michelle decided to switch it up and we ended up doing “Imagine” first,” said Boots.

When asked how the duo prepared for the show Evans responded, “We went upstairs and practiced with the pianos here as much as we could… they pushed the show back a couple weeks so we had a lot more time to practice as well.”

This group however received scores much lower than those that they had expected. According to Evans, “…the judges made some mistakes because I think we performed it perfectly, but we went kind of early in the competition so they weren’t really able to compare us to some of the other acts… one of the judges even admitted after the show that he had robbed us of a nine.” When asked how he felt about the judges for the competition Boots replied, “I liked Miller because he actually knew what he was talking about for singers and just stage presence…the other two were just kind of random…I mean I love Ms. Sanchez and Mr. Mackie because he gave us a ten, but they really didn’t seem to know how to judge singing.”

Senior, Noah Christy, sang in Committed, a group made up of three juniors and two senior boys. When asked how the group was formed, Christy said, “Well we all sing in choir so we thought that it would just be fun…it was my senior year so I thought…why not?” This group sang “Ole West Side” and were able to wow the judges enough to earn three tens and a spot in the final round. The group made it through the second round and ultimately ended up winning the whole competition.
One of the reasons the judges and audience loved Committed so much was for their song choice. When asked about how they chose to sing “Ole West Side” he said, “Well it was kind of last minute, but we knew that we definitely wanted to bring it back to West.” In his closing comments Christy stated, “It felt really nice to win, but I did it all for Cyril Boots.”