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Singing students’ praises in St. C: Championships celebrated

T-L Photo/RICK THORP Wayne Berk, left, leads members of the St. C Singers in the performance of a selection last week at a meeting of the St. Clairsville-Richland City Board of Education. The group is currently in New York City participating in the Big Apple Music Festival.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Members of the St. C Singers Show Choir visited last week’s St. Clairsville-Richland City Board of Education meeting. And they brought some hardware with them.

Plenty of it.

The 13 trophies — some as tall as 5 feet — were placed in and around the board members, who smiled gleefully as they took their places for the monthly meeting.

Superintendent Walt Skaggs might have had to peek through a few of them to see those in attendance, but he didn’t mind. He reveled in the accomplishments of the group, which recently completed one its most successful seasons in its nearly 40-year history.

“As you know, we are so limited, yet we continue to produce the best of the best when it comes to fine arts,” Skaggs said, referring to the district’s limited resources. “That’s a credit to Mr. (Wayne) Berk and the students.”

Four- and three-year members of the group were at the meeting, along with Berk, the group’s director, and assistant director Kristen Rateno, to be honored by the board for claiming two Grand Championships this season and five division championships.

“What these students have done to be able to accomplish this is quite incredible,” Berk said after group members performed a selection for board members.

The seniors, Berk pointed out, have had an especially historic run.

“This group have had a streak of 13 straight division championships dating back to freshman year,” he said. “To put that into perspective, the St. C Singers was founded in 1980 and won two Grand Championships over its first 35 years of existence. This senior class has won four in the last four years, including two at invitationals this year.”

The group, which numbers 48, participated in five shows this year throughout Ohio and West Virginia. Berk said practice begins the first of November, with shows starting in January. This weekend, the group is New York City participating in the Big Apple Music Festival. It will return Monday evening.

“We, basically, practice five days a week for about three hours daily,” Berk said. “By the time of our first competition, we cut our practice time to about three days a week just to stay sharp.”

This year’s show was called “Shadows into the Light.”

“We’ve had a lot of good groups,” Berk said. “But this is definitely the highest achievement we’ve had.”

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