Taylor Swift of Wyomissing Hills was invited to sing the national anthem
READING EAGLE, APRIL 19, 2002 | JEREMY CARROLL
Taylor A. Swift, twelve, of Wyomissing Hills thought her ten-year-old brother, Austin K., might have been playing an April Fools’ Day joke on her when he told her the Philadelphia 76ers invited her to sing the national anthem at an upcoming home basketball game.
But Austin was telling the truth, relaying the information from their father, Scott K., who phoned with the thrilling day-after-Easter news.
“My mom and I were just jumping up and down we were so excited,” said Taylor, who sang the anthem just before the tip-off of the Sixers game against the Detroit Pistons on April 5.
“I just really love doing that sort of thing,” she said. “It is an adrenaline rush for me.”
Swift, a sixth grader at West Reading Elementary Center, sang the national anthem at a Reading Phillies game several years ago.
Last month she did another rendition at a basketball game at Wyomissing High School in which the Harlem Wizards played against the Wyomissing Heroes, made up of school faculty and other members of the community.
It was her first performance at the Wizards’ game that gave her the chance to sing at a much larger venue, Philadelphia’s First Union Center, where 20,754 fans came to see the Sixers and Pistons play.
Scott Swift sent in a video of his daughter singing the anthem to the 76ers, hoping the team would recognize her talent.
Sixers manager of game operations Kathy Drysdale, who said she gets hundreds of videotapes from performers interested in singing the anthem at one of the team’s exhibition games or forty-one regular season home games, sat up and took notice of Swift.
“She has this fantastic voice that catches everyone’s attention,” Drysdale said. “Her voice is so strong and powerful at twelve years old. You look at her and think, ‘Did that come out of her mouth?’ ”
Swift left for Philadelphia right after school on April 5 with her parents, brother, and a friend of her brother. They encountered lots of traffic and wound up making it to the arena just in time for her sound check at five.
Shortly after their arrival, team officials presented Taylor, Austin, and Austin’s friend with duffel bags full of 76ers merchandise, including basketballs, jerseys, and hats. Taylor also received a jersey signed by some of the Sixers players.
After getting ready in a private dressing room, Swift was escorted by a security guard onto the court, which was adorned with a red carpet.
Her mother, Andrea F., admitted she was very nervous leading up to the anthem.
“They had a small number of cameras all focused right around her and she was up on the big screen,” Andrea said. “It’s very, very scary as a mom to see your child out there.”
Taylor was much more relaxed about the whole thing, experiencing few butterflies even as the lights were dimmed just moments before her performance.
“I was just practicing the first note over and over in my head,” she said.
Swift, who sang the final words of the anthem in the midst of deafening cheers from the crowd, said the whole experience was a big thrill.
“All of these NBA players and all of these other people were looking at me,” she said. “It was really a wonderful feeling.”
Swift has been performing practically all of her life in local theater productions.
Next Friday and Saturday she will perform in Wyomissing High School’s production of The Sound of Music.
Swift, whose maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay, of Wyomissing Park, is a retired opera singer, has been pursuing a country music singing career.
The aspiring singing star, who also plays electric guitar, performed with the Pat Garrett Band at last year’s Bloomsburg Fair and has cut a country CD.
Late last month the Swifts traveled to Nashville, where they distributed the CD to record companies in the hope of landing a recording deal.
When she is not busy performing, Swift enjoys spending time with her friends.
A REVIEW OF TAYLOR SWIFT
FALL 2006 RICK BELL
Despite a grown-up major-label debut, it appears Taylor Swift is okay with just being a kid sometimes. Swift, a native of Pennsylvania’s farm country, is all of sixteen. She keeps up with friends and fans on MySpace, bored-teenager doodles meander through the liner notes, and the album, which includes her coming-of-age debut single “Tim McGraw,” has an iPod feel with as much pop as country among the eleven cuts.
Yet Swift, thanks in part to unknown producer Nathan Chapman, deftly blends a Cyndi Thomson–meets–Hilary Duff sound anchored in Swift’s smart songwriting while employing a heady list of studio musicians. Chapman is a budding talent as well, playing about every instrument imaginable while handling the production chores. Swift wrote or cowrote all the cuts, but credits her coauthors—primarily Liz Rose, who pitched in on seven songs, including “Tim McGraw”—for lending direction and focus.
Swift’s best efforts come on her deeply personal, self-penned songs, particularly “The Outside” and “Our Song,” which she sings with stirring conviction.
It’s an impressive debut that, while she pines about lost love and Tim McGraw, will likely have others singing the praises of Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift
by Tony Orbach, edited by Ben Tausig
ACROSS
1 Grouchy types
6 Actress Reid of the Sharknado movies
10 Letters on a party invitation
14 Hard-hit baseball
15 Unwelcome smell
16 Olympic fencing sword
17 Assume the role of
18 Taylor Swift single named for Faith Hill’s husband, who recorded her “favorite song”
20 Competes in a slalom race, say
21 “My country, ’tis of ___ . . .”
22 Train track
23 Taylor Swift breakup song in which she will “strike a match on all my wasted time”
26 Once ___ lifetime
27 Build on
29 Made into grain-sized pieces
32 Contented sound from a cat
35 What a commoner might call a king
37 Progressive Insurance ad character played by comedian Stephanie Courtney
38 Taylor Swift’s album-closing tune that is “the slamming screen door, sneakin’ out late, tapping on your window”
41 Sergeant or corporal: Abbr.
42 Heidi of Project Runway
44 Prod into action
45 Church instrument
47 Hair tangle
49 Sheep’s greeting
50 Taylor Swift song in which she hopes “your life leads you back to my door”
57 College bigwig below the provost
58 Toddler’s song, perhaps
59 Back of the neck
60 Taylor Swift song in which there is “a rainy ending given to a perfect day”
62 Treat badly
63 Cowboy’s suffix with buck
64 Car horn beep
65 Solitary person
66 Roseanne star
67 Film protagonist Skywalker
68 Tries to flatten, as a fly
DOWN
1 Manila envelope fastener
2 Talk show host ___ Lake
3 Single bit of silliness
4 “Fight for Your Right” band the ___ Boys
5 Twelfth graders: Abbr.
6 “Take Me Out ___ Ball Game”
7 On ___ (trying to lose weight)
8 Juliet’s love
9 Body part on which Taylor Swift wrote lyrics during her Speak Now tour
10 “Give My ___ to Broadway”
11 Competing in the 100-meter, say
12 Cutlet meat
13 Bench in a church
19 Gunk
21 ___ la la (nonsense song syllables)
24 Computer editing command
25 Farm building in which Taylor Swift’s “Crazier” video is set
28 Killer whale
29 ___ Stadium (D.C. United’s home field)
30 Misfortunes
31 Summer camp boss
32 Paid player
33 Team ___ (Olympic basketball powerhouse)
34 Fishing pole
36 Extremely long time
39 Especially unpleasant, like some breakups
40 The best ever, for short
43 Bullfighter
46 LGBT flag symbol
48 ___ temperature (was feverish)
49 Tour vehicle for Taylor Swift
51 Blue ___ (hit song for both Roy Orbison and Linda Ronstadt)
52 Purchase for a Kindle
53 Sharp, as an angle
54 Flora’s counterpart
55 Unexpected sports outcome
56 Lascivious looks
57 Nickelodeon’s ___ the Explorer
60 Big city transportation option
61 Letters on a Cardinals cap
62 Politicians Gore and Franken
This puzzle is courtesy of avxword.com. For the solution, see page 280.
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