The Heritage choir has been working since the beginning of the year to stand out at their upcoming UIL contest.

Even though the competition isn’t for a couple of months, they hope to showcase their talent and add to their previous year’s accomplishments.

“We’ve been preparing since last year’s UIL and that’s with sight reading with continual skills and warmups. All of these talents and skills sets we’ve been working on to work towards UIL, and so it’s not just UIL happens and this is what we do, it’s an all year process. It is working towards this competition as it’s just a snapshot of what happens in the classroom,” choir director Riley Worthen said.

Last year, they received straight ones at their competition, which means they got very high scores. They also brought home multiple trophies.

“We were the only school in Frisco to do that, to have straight ones both in our concert performance and our sight reading performance. It was the first time that it was done also here at Heritage High School. So it was a huge success to what the kids had done and what they’ve accomplished for the year,” Worthen said.

The choir plans to improve their singing skills and advance their program to be even stronger than they were at last year’s contest.

“Every year you want to be better than the year before, better than you were when you started. It doesn’t matter if this is your first time, it teaches you to learn from last year’s mistakes and improve from that,” junior Jackie Ashook said.

During the stressful months leading up to UIL, choir students say that Mr. Worthen’s personality helps them focus better.

“He’ll make it fun because of how energetic and passionate he is. Like he doesn’t make it too serious the whole time but then he wouldn’t slack off either. There’s a good in between to both of those because it’s just like you can tell how…much he’s been…dedicated into doing for us to do well and [for] us to have like good scores in the end too,” junior Anosha Mohammed said.

Mr. Worthen appreciates how hardworking and passionate the choir students are when it comes to preparing for their competition.

“The best thing is being… in front of the kids to have that control and to look up and see their eyes and see how they respond to your gesture to respond to your conducting technique and being able to put this music that we’ve worked so hard on together… then eventually have it blossom and to perform it… and to me that’s what I love,” Worthen said.

At their competition on April 11th and 12th, they plan to prove to the judges that all of their hard work deserves a trophy.