Singing in the new year

COEUR d’ALENE — What better way to start the new year than with a wish?

That wish, for longtime North Idaho resident and mom Sarah Andrews, is to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the National Football League.

"I love sporting events. I love going - they're exciting, they're fun," Andrews said Thursday while seated in the front room of her Coeur d'Alene home.

Andrews, 43, has been a singer since age 5, with years of choir and performing lead vocals for various bands on her resume.

When she was about 19, she performed the national anthem for the Spokane Chiefs hockey team. After that, it was "a speckling of college basketball games and roller derby games," she said.

“After you sing it a couple hundred times in high school alone, it’s tattooed in my brain,” she said. “That fear of forgetting words or anything like that has been gone for a long time.”

Andrews has since performed the national anthem for the Portland Winterhawks junior hockey team, Washington State University's men's basketball team, the Spokane Indians baseball team, Spokane Shock football team and North Idaho College Cardinals basketball. She has two Chiefs performances coming up, Friday and March 12.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, Andrews, like many, sorely missed live interaction and live performances.

That's when her mind began to wander and her bucket list expanded.

"I have never been to an NFL game in my life, so I figured I will keep working my way up and get my name going through the sports planning community and, hopefully, eventually, make it to perform at any game," she said. "My team is the Seahawks, but I will not be picky if I were to reach my goal."

If someone within the NFL network contacts her, Andrews said her response would be: “What time, what flight and what am I gonna wear?!”

"I would be jumping up and down like a little girl,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to contain myself.”

While she's pursuing a dream in the spotlight, she also remembers why this star-spangled song means so much to so many.

"My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor," Andrews said.

"I’ve had a lot of Vietnam veteran friends, older friends. I’ve watched them suffer in their lives, in their families, develop addictions, cancers. So much sacrifice. It just reminds me to remember the people like that: old, new, current, injured, not injured, anybody who serves our country. It’s a reminder to me, we wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t for the old-school guys.”

She’s thinking of hiring an agent, “or maybe it’s one of those things where somebody reads this and goes, ‘I could totally help her out!’" Andrews said.

It might happen this year, or perhaps next year. Andrews is happy to be patient and will keep working on making the right connections.

But if NFL officials are in need of a singer next season, they'll need to look no further than North Idaho.

See Andrews perform the national anthem at a Spokane Indians game in August: https://bit.ly/32QD5S0