Bloomington teacher and longtime Chicago White Sox fan Destinee Feliciano gets to cross off a bucket-list item this week: singing the national anthem before a White Sox game.
Feliciano said she sent in an audition video for the White Sox’s national anthem contest and then forgot about it. That was until she saw an email from the White Sox saying she was one of the top seven contenders to sing the national anthem.
“And it was like the real deal,” said Feliciano. “They had me go in, they announced my name. There was a camera crew there, and I did interviews, and I actually got to go on the field and sing [the national anthem] in the mic and hear myself throughout the stadium, which was super cool.”
After the in-person audition at Guaranteed Rate Field, Feliciano got Portillo’s and went home. “I didn't really know what to expect, or if I should expect anything,” said Feliciano.
The following week Feliciano got a call from her contact at the White Sox saying they were giving feedback to all the contestants.
“So at this point I'm thinking: I did not get this,” Feliciano said. “It's fine, they're just gonna give me some notes and I'll try it again. I'll do it better next time.”
“And then [the White Sox contact] said, ‘Destinee Feliciano, that just sounds like a superstar name, so you're gonna be singing the national anthem for us.’ And it totally threw me off because I was not expecting it.”
![Destinee Feliciano singing the national anthem at Guaranteed Rate Field.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c8f930b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5593x3995+0+0/resize/880x629!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F7a%2F2d%2F6210a34a48b1a1b33e32a6b5d4ef%2Fdestineefeliciano-whitesox-nationalanthem-bollinger05.jpg)
Music education
Feliciano is a general music teacher and choir director at Tri-Valley Middle School and High School, and said she hopes that this achievement will set a good example for her students.
“They think I'm the coolest person in the world,” Feliciano said. When she told her fourth and fifth grade students about winning the contest they were “screaming at the top of their lungs.”
Feliciano said some of her students saw her on a Peoria TV station and yelled in class: “Miss Feliciano you're on our TV. Miss Feliciano, you're famous! You're famous!”
“I'm just a normal person that teaches,” said Feliciano. “And it's just been normal my whole life, and so I hope that it inspires at least a couple of them that want to pursue [music] to continue working on their craft and pursuing it in the future.”
Ever since she was little, Feliciano said she has always loved music. By the time Feliciano was in high school, she knew she was going to pursue music.
“And it's more than just teaching music for me,” said Feliciano. Music was a safe space for her as a child, so Feliciano said she wanted to continue to build a community like that for her students who might not have a community anywhere else.
That feeling of wanting to build a safe community for students is why Feliciano said she got into music education in college in the first place.
Preparation
This will not be Feliciano’s first time singing at a White Sox game. While attending the University of Illinois, Feliciano’s acapella group got to sing the national anthem at Guaranteed Rate Field.
“I feel like this opportunity is even more special for me because I get to do it by myself,” said Feliciano.
In preparation for her performance Feliciano has been practicing with her vocal coach Brayton Bowman. Feliciano said Bowman has been the perfect coach because he has sung the national anthem at a Los Angeles Lakers game, and told her exactly what to expect.
“He told me, ‘You can drop the key [to] whatever you're most comfortable in,” said Feliciano. “[Bowman said], ‘I can tell you it's gonna be 90 seconds and they don't want you to change it too much, and you don't want to do anything too crazy.”
The national anthem is infamously a difficult song to sing, even for professionally trained singers. To add to the difficulty, Feliciano said she will not receive a starting pitch prior to the performance.
“But it's preparation and repetition. I think just building my confidence so that even if I do it and it's not what I feel like is my best, it'll still be the national anthem, it’ll still be recognizable,” said Feliciano.
![Destinee Feliciano smiling and holding a microphone on Guaranteed Rate Field.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/863aee3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6216x4440+0+0/resize/880x629!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F62%2F29%2F902c65d64f59ac18fe3a04d7666f%2Fdestineefeliciano-whitesox-nationalanthem-bollinger09.jpg)
Even though the White Sox are on track to break the record for most losses in Major League Baseball history, Feliciano said she does not care.
“I'm not doing this because I want to sing in front of thousands of people. I've done that already. I'm doing this because I love the White Sox and it's just something that I've always wanted to do ever since I was a little girl.”
Feliciano will be singing at Guaranteed Rate Field at 6:28 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10. The game will start at 6:40 p.m.