With Season 11 of American Idol starting this month, and America’s Got Talent coming in to town, the attention of our school has turned toward two students.

Last August, American Idol came to the Frank Erwin Center for the third time to search for talented singers in the Austin area.  Two girls from our school, junior Julie Latimer and senior Suzie Cavanaugh, tried out to be on the show, competing with hundreds of others for a singing career.

“The day of the auditions,  I had to be at the Erwin Center at 5:00am; I sat outside wrapped around the building for hours in the blistering sun with the most talented people I have ever heard in one place,” Latimer said.

“Everyone was sweating terribly. I loved the atmosphere though,” Latimer said.

Latimer said that everyone did quite a bit of waiting around outside and even longer when they got inside to finally sing in front of the judges who were the TV producers. Contestants have to make it through three rounds before they sing in front of Randy, Simon and Paula.

“It was nothing like they show on TV; there were supposed to be two judges at each table but I only had one judge and I didn’t know who she was. She wasn’t even paying attention to us…you get up there and she told us each we had 30 seconds to sing for her,” Cavanaugh said.

When Latimer was singing, she was with three other people. They were behind a black curtain so they couldn’t watch other people sing.

“She said, ‘sorry guys, none of you made it”, and I remember leaving and there were a bunch of people crying outside,’” Cavanaugh said.

Latimer and Cavanaugh were both given different reasons for not being chosen for the next round.

 “In the end they told me I was too young, I was just turned 16 and needed more experience,” Latimer said.