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Hazelwood North Middle student ties for #1 in Pre-Teen America Program
RACHEL MORGAN, 11, with her father, the Rev. C. E. Morgan with her ribbon and trophy after tying for first in the 2008 Pre-Teen America National Scholarship and Recognition program.
She performed a song called a waltz and it became a command performance as Rachel Morgan, 11, tied for the win in the senior talent component of the 2008 Pre-Teen America National Scholarship and Recognition Program.
Seeking a new musical piece that would stretch her mentally, Morgan, a sixth grade student who enters Hazelwood North Middle School this fall, played Chopin’s Waltz Op. 64, No. 1 at the piano. She matched a girl’s performance from Dayton, Ohio and the pair split a $300 educational bond.
Mistakenly thought of by some as a beauty pageant, Pre-Teen America is an academic and enrichment program at which some of the best and brightest top female honor roll students ages 7 to 13 compete for more than $25,000 in educational savings bonds, prizes and awards.
“Tying at nationals says to me that I’m as good as everybody says,” she said. “When I practice for hours and hours at the piano, I see at the end that I really am that good.”
She said she spent three hours a day, five days a week for four weeks, learning her new song, which, in competition has to be 2.5 minutes long. The song features rich textures and both hands of the player are kept occupied as they work their way through the complex patterns of notes in the bass and treble clefs.
“The left hand plays its own melody in the song,” Morgan said. “It was amazing to hear her start the song, the challenge of it and after three weeks, she mastered it,” said her father, Reverend C.E. Morgan.
“It was really difficult, playing for three hours daily, but in the end, it was worth it,” she said.
After competing at both state and national levels for so long, Rachel lost some of her incentive to keep going, her father said, until she went to the national competition this year.
“That rekindled her motivation,” he said.
Her newfound motivation has provided her with a new skill for her to master – public speaking. For the Missouri Pre-Teen competition this year, she has a two-minute speech ready.
“It discusses how Pre-Teen America made me a better student, citizen and individual,” she said. “Her speech is the compilation and documentation of her inspiration in two minutes,” said her father.
Over the Labor Day holiday, she will return to the Pre-Teen Missouri competition for the third time and Morgan has her sights on becoming the state and national senior title holder, the highest prize of the entire competition. If she wins in Jefferson City for a third time, she will again return to the national stage next summer.
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