Saratoga News

Rachel Udall, a student at St. Andrew's School, sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner' on May 11 at the Giants game.

Eleven-year-old singer hits high notes

By Sarah Lombardo

As the crowd of 30,000 fans stood for "The Star-Spangled Banner," a young girl stood on the pitcher's mound at Candlestick Park. A microphone in hand, a red San Francisco Giants baseball cap on her head and a cameraman constantly hovering about a foot away from her face, she sang the anthem for the crowd, reaching and holding each note perfectly.

As sport reporters and Giants officials took their seats up in the press box, someone blurted out, "Are you sure she's only 11?"

Rachel Udall, a student at St. Andrew's School in Saratoga, had just sung to her biggest crowd yet.

"She looked so little out there," her mother, Laura, said. Before the game, Rachel admitted that she was nervous. She was, after all, performing for close to 30,000 people. And even the best singers have trouble with that tricky high note in the national anthem.

But her mother said she took it in stride, only slowing the pace of her singing to get accustomed to the echo in the stadium.

With the jitters behind her, Rachel was all smiles as she led the crowd through "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch.

Laura and Rachel's father, Nick, made up Rachel's first audience.

"When the kids were babies, I used to keep a tape recorder around," Laura says. "And she was always singing. She'd sing to commercials and make up songs. She might not always get the words right, but she'd get the tempo. And always right on pitch."

When she got a little older, Rachel would sing into the tape recorder for her parents, often embellishing on the songs she already knew and then inventing more.

On one tape, a 4-year-old Rachel can be heard finishing a song with the gusto of a concert singer completing her encore, and then announcing to her parents, "I'm finished."

Laura is heard in the background saying, "OK, I think it's time to get ready for bed ..."

Rachel responds: "But I'm not finished yet!"

"I've just always been interested in singing," Rachel says.

When she was 5 years old, Rachel performed in her first musical with the San Jose Children's Musical Theater.

About 20 plays and a number of appearances later--including a stint at a charity masquerade ball hosted by football star Ronnie Lott when she was 10 and opening-day ceremonies for Saratoga Little League this year--the fifth-grader's interest hasn't waned.

"I think I'll be doing this for a while," she said.

It was at Lott's engagement that she was heard by members of the Giants team and told she should sing at a game. When the United Service Organizations, which sponsored the May 16 baseball game, called and asked Rachel to sing the national anthem, she agreed.

"It's going to be exciting to see where this instrument takes her and what she sounds like," Daniel Hughes, Rachel's voice instructor, says.

"When I heard her voice, I heard the potential of that wonderful instrument," he said.

Hughes first heard Rachel sing in the summer of 1996, when he was the vocal director for a production put on by the West Valley Light Opera. Rachel was in the ensemble.

"I normally don't work with people this young because I don't think it's wise, unless I'm working with them to help them prevent damaging their voices," Hughes says. "But Rachel is so focused. She is a really grounded individual."

Everything Rachel does musically has been what Rachel has wanted to do, her mom says, pointing out that although she has encouraged Rachel, she has never pushed her in her singing.

"And she knows that if her grades go down, she has to cut back," Laura says.

Rachel says she'd like to parlay her singing ability into a career as a singer/actress, and is active in school theater and a jazz dance group outside of school.

But will her Giants appearance help her get parts in school productions? No, Rachel says.

"I have been put in plays because of the way I sing or perform. I think I deserve to work for the parts. I don't always get the good parts, but that's OK," she says. "I'm only in the fifth grade."

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