KMEA District Choir is an honors choir represented by sophomores, juniors and seniors from a specific district. De Soto High School students compete in the northeast district. This year, two choir students auditioned and were accepted into the district choir from De Soto: senior Simon Couch and junior Kirsten Stous.

For auditions, students had to sing certain sections from three songs that were provided in August, along with a sight reading portion, where they were given a line of music and had to sing it on the spot.

Both representatives feel like new choir teacher Mindy Fry helped them prepare for auditions.

“District choir is a thing that a few people have tried out for the past few years but Mrs. Fry really got us started on getting everybody to try out,” Couch said.

Fry had all the De Soto Voce students practice in class, which Stous believes really helped.

“In class, we did a bunch of sight reading examples, and we prepared with those,” Stous said. “We also went to Salina and we learned all the songs [where] we were able to prepare and learn our parts.”

Stous is referring to when many De Soto Voce members went to Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina.

“This year, De Soto Voce went on a field trip to Kansas Westland University, where we got to work with college students and college professors to learn the music,” Fry said.

To De Soto, district choir this year was mainly preparation to do better in future year

“It was a learning experience. We got two students in, which is an improvement from what we’ve done in the last couple years,” Fry said. “Hopefully, we can take this experience and learn from it and continue to improve.”

Fry is happy that the music program is starting to become bigger and better.

“I’m just really glad that we’ve finally gotten a few people in, and we’re starting to set the precedent of that being a thing,” Couch said. “I think Mrs. Fry is taking really good steps there, and from now on it won’t be as rare as a thing as it has been.”

Couch and Stous will go to a clinic at Shawnee Mission Northwest on Dec. 3, and then have a mini-convention later that day. In January, they will find out if they also made the All-State choir, which will perform in Wichita in February.