Janel Baker, director of Taylor University’s Women’s Chorus, never thought she would be sitting courtside at a Final Four game in Lucas Oil Stadium listening to athletes sing her arrangement of the national anthem.
Baker first became aware of the opportunity back in February, when her friend Mark DuBois, school superintendent at Western School Corporation, was approached by the daughter of a friend after a College Park church service.
Carrie Shearer, coordinator of leadership development at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was preparing for the Final Four men’s game coming to Indianapolis and had been given the responsibility of helping organize senior athletes to sing the national anthem for the game. However, Shearer told DuBois that she needed a music teacher who would be able to help screen and work with the students who would be selected and flown in for the performance.
“Carrie contacted me and said, ‘Hey Janel, Mark recommended that you would be great to work with these national anthem singers. Would you be interested?’” Baker said.
After accepting the request, Baker realized that she would be on a school trip in France during part of the time that she would need to work on this project. She decided to enlist the help of her co-worker Autumn Smith ‘12, a fellow choir director at Western School Corporation.
Smith wasn’t just Baker’s co-worker—Baker had known her since she was five years old.
“I had her in piano lessons until her senior year,” Baker said.
After graduating from Taylor in 2012, Smith was hired to help with the growing choir program that Baker directed at Western Middle/High School. They have now been working together for ten years.
When the final four teams were determined, the NCAA sent out an announcement to those schools that encouraged any student-athletes to send audition recordings in for a chance to be selected to perform the national anthem.
While she was in France, Baker communicated back and forth with Smith and helped in the screening process, listening to vocal auditions and looking for how well voices would blend together.
Four women were selected to sing the arrangement of the national anthem that Baker had written. She had originally created it in the 90s when she was directing a girls choir at Rossville Middle High School and had realized there were very few arrangements of the national anthem tailored to female voices.
Baker’s arrangement featured two soprano and two alto parts, and it became one that she could use when the group needed to sing at basketball games. But now, she was wiping off the dust of old memories to restructure the music for a far bigger event.
“It had been a while since I had a performance of all females, because usually I have mixed groups,” Baker said. “I took that arrangement with me, knowing that I was going to have girls and that that's kind of how that all happened.”
On April 3, Baker rehearsed with the four women in College Park Church before they had a sound check at Lucas Oil Stadium. The day of the event, they gathered in a green room under the stadium to run through the arrangement one more time.
Baker described the four women as “energetic and excited to be there,” as each one wore a clothing item that represented their own school. They came from all different sports, as well, from basketball and field hockey to swimming and running.
Before they stepped on the court, Baker said she was able to have a conversation with them about handling nerves and confidence, as each woman needed to hold her own musical part.
But as their voices were raised together in harmony, Baker found herself in a sort of disbelief.
“I just sat there like, ‘Yep, this is what God talks about,’” she said. “You get these blessings in life where you feel like you're not worthy of them, yet He uses a gift in which He's built so that you can exalt Him or be used by Him."
