Expanding her horizons, Emaline Duquette, a senior at Athens High School, will sing the national anthem for the Savannah Bananas on May 25, when they play at the Huntington Park Stadium in Columbus.
The Savannah Bananas — baseball's equivalent to the Harlem Globetrotters — is a professional minor league baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia, that plays in Banana Ball, a fast-paced style of baseball with choreographed routines to popular music. The team will compete against the Party Animals on May 24-26 in Columbus. The games are sold out, according to the team's website, thesavannahbananas.com/ .
A representative of the Savannah Bananas reached out to Duquette via Instagram, inviting her to sing for a game, as they saw her professional singing videos online, she said. After ensuring the message was not a scam, she eagerly accepted the invitation and began planning for the event.
Duquette got her start in singing at only five years old, when her mom entered her in a talent show at a local library in Greenville, she said.
“I was singing around the house, making up little songs about walking down to the bus stop and things like that. And so I would be making up songs and then my mom was like, 'Oh, so she likes music,' ” Duquette said.
Following her first talent show, she repeated the activity the next year before moving to Orlando, Florida, and joining a small children’s group which traveled around the city performing. She worked with this group from about eight to 12 years old.
From here, Duquette moved to Athens, only continuing her musical journey throughout the city. She has performed in music festivals and other events in Athens since she was nine years old, she said.
“It's almost a therapeutic get-away because you have to have a certain mindset when you're performing to make sure that it's correct for the crowd that you're performing for,” Duquette said. “Like if it's an older group of people or even a young group of people there's different things you have to do and so kind of maneuvering that social situation.”
At 12 years old, Duquette began singing for a variety of Ohio University sporting events, thanks to a connection through her mom, she said. Her family reached out to an employee at the OU sports department, and she was able to complete a small audition. Following an audition, Duquette was invited to sing the national anthem during the women’s volleyball game that evening.
From here, OU has occasionally asked her to sing the national anthem at a variety sporting events, an experience she hopes to continue as an OU student studying music production and marketing this fall.
“The Athens community, coming out to events that I've been at and the support of my peers at my school and my theater peers, has really helped me push along to keep doing what I'm doing and keep my inspiration,” Duquette said.
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