Ten brave and talented Saratoga students took the stage at the McAfee Center on March 21, each vying for the honor of being crowned this year’s Saratoga Idol, a title that ultimately went to senior Chelsea Venuti for her soulful rendition of Carrie Underwood’s song “Temporary Home.”
“I honestly didn’t think I would win; everyone had their own unique voice and stage presence,” Venuti said. “It was a great experience.”
Winners received Chipotle gift cards worth $20 for first place, $15 for second place, and $10 for third place, donated by history teacher Matt Torrens. In total, the junior class raised $1,600 from the 150 people who attended.
Many competitors chose to personalize their performances, with senior Jimmy Zheng dedicating his cover of Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to his parents and senior Katie Cummins adapting the lyrics of her song, “Who I Am” by Jessica Andrews, to include the names of her family members in the audience. Many of their peers were pleasantly surprised by the hidden talent.
“It was great being able to see many of my peers sing and showcase a talent that I didn’t know they had,” senior Alton Fong said.
The performance featured seniors Venuti, Cummins, Zheng, Penny Burgess, Tiffany Tu and Shayda Khorasani, junior Erik Martin, sophomores Nikhil Goel and Manini Desai and freshman Nina Jayashankar.
“In the beginning, I tried out just for fun because I thought ‘why not, it’s senior year,’” Tu said. “When I got in, I became really excited and just went for it.”
The audience was enthusiastic but smaller than expected, owing to the fact that many students had conflicts or exams near the performance.
“We actually had a pretty good turnout considering the amount of testing going on during that week, such as the [AP US History] test or the [AP Chemistry] midterm,” junior class representative Kiki Shim said. “Because we had an overabundance of class officers, we split the jobs pretty evenly and everything ran smoothly.”
Along with the performers were two intermission acts, one by seniors Ivan Lee and Eric Wang and another by seniors Parthiv Mohan and Manish Raghavan with a violin-guitar accompanied duet. Lee and Wang performed a duet of Michael Alvarado’s ‘Missing You Like Crazy’ after pulling up freshman volunteer Natalie Miller to be the focus of the performance.
“It was exhilarating,” Wang said. “Before the show, I made sure girls would raise their hands when I asked for volunteers. My parents were coming to watch and I wanted them to think I was popular with the girls at school.”
Several students worked backstage to ensure that the performance ran smoothly, including juniors Jason Seo and Stephen Jensen.
“Our job is to make the performers look great,” Seo said.
Many of the performers were excited to have been a part of the show.
“I’m really glad I decided to try out,” said Tu, “because it was something I never would have done if I didn’t push myself to get out there.”