Editor's Note: Matchdays are full of energy, drama, movement and feats of athletic achievements. All eyes are on the field, watching the ball and the players as the clock ticks forward through 90 minutes.
But the pitch is not the only place where there is activity. There's pregame pageantry and anthems, referees getting set, photographers snapping pictures and more. In this special "Sideline View" series, we'll learn more about some of the interesting aspects that happen behind-the-scenes in helping make a soccer game at Providence Park become the memorable experience that it is.
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PORTLAND, Ore. – If anyone was ever born to sing the national anthem, it was Kyra Smith.
According to Smith's mother, Tricia, when young Kyra was only three years-old, she once sat up in her crib – still asleep – and began belting out the national anthem. When Tricia asked her daughter about it the next day, Smith didn't recall a thing.
Smith, now 23, is one of a small cadre of local singers who you've seen and heard singing the anthem at Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns games. By her own estimation, Smith has sung at close to 100 events at Providence Park, and that's not including all of the times that she's sung for the Portland Trail Blazers, the Portland Winterhawks, or even the Seattle Seahawks.
But there are a lot of misconceptions about what exactly a singer's job is like. According to Smith and her parents, people often assume that the singer shows up at game time, sings the anthem, and then leaves. That impression belies that amount of hard work and preparation that singers do before every match.
On a typical match day, Smith and her parents will arrive at Providence Park over two hours before kickoff. Smith comes out onto the field to do a microphone check, which always entails a complete run through of the anthem or anthems being sung. These mic checks, Smith says, will often serve as her only anthem warm-up.
Afterwards, Smith and her father Trevor, an accomplished anthem singer himself, will head into the dressing room for a final vocal warm-up. The pair will always do a mash-up of two popular songs, which Trevor will sometimes upload to YouTube. In one warm-up, recorded at a Winterhawks playoff game, Smith and her father combine Justin Timberlake's “Suit and Tie” with Justin Bieber's “As Long As You Love Me.”
The result is stunning.
After finishing the mash-up, Smith and her parents take it easy. They will talk to staff – many of whom they've gotten to know well over the years – and wander around the stadium. With Smith's big moment still over an hour away, this time is all about getting comfortable and staying focused.
Many people ask Smith if it ever gets old singing the national anthem over and over again. It doesn't, she tells them, because singing at a place like Providence Park, with its outdoor acoustics and enthusiastically vocal fans, always provides a different experience.
“The crowd is so unique here, for the Timbers games and the Thorns games,” Smith explains. “Seeing them also excited and chanting before you walk out – I just get so overwhelmed with excitement. It's the best feeling you could ask for. Then when I'm singing and I see the scarves up in the air and I heard everybody singing along with me – that's so unique.
"To be able to have that spirit [with the fans] and know that you're singing the anthem together as one – it's not just a team that's on the field, it's a team that's in the stadium as well.”
It never bothers her, she says, when the fans sing along to the anthem. She's learned over the years to embrace their rendition and add to it with her own performance.
“I absolutely love when they sing with me,” she says. “I think they give me more energy as well. Depending on timing...I'll try to slow down [to sing] with them as much as possible.”
When she walks out onto the field ahead of the Timbers' recent home match against the San Jose Earthquakes, Smith looks totally relaxed. She jokes around with staff and pulls out her phone to take photos of the players warming up on the field. Watching her wait on the sideline, you would never guess that she was about to perform in front of over 21,000 strangers.
“It's more excitement,” Smith says of her emotions before the match. “It's such an amazing feeling.”
Shortly before the opening whistle, as the players walk out to midfield with the officials and the honor guard, Smith follows close on their heels. She strides confidently up to the microphone, her pitch pipe in her left hand, and stands waiting for her cue.
When it finally comes, she puts a finger in one ear, finds her starting note with the pitch pipe, and begins: “O say can you see...”
As she moves from verse to verse, Smith begins to hit her stride. When she gets to anthem's final bars, the scarves waving all around her, an electricity begins to course through the stadium. The fans sense it, the players sense it, and most of all Smith senses it. By the time Smith gets to the anthem's emphatic final line – “…and the home of the brave” – Providence Park is rocking and Smith is all smiles.
