By Tyler Dahlgren

The Soundsational Singers have carried a tune for 34 years, since a young music teacher named Molly Jennings joined the staff at O’Neill Elementary and expanded the school’s Special Choir.

Jennings has led this room and this unique program since 1990, and her colorfully-decorated walls pay homage to the nearly 1,000 Singers who built this program into what it is today: a foundational piece of the school’s culture.

“It’s what we do here,” said principal Jim York. “It’s kind of the cool thing to do at our school. As a father, when my kids get to fourth grade, it’s always something they look forward to. We have 25 kids who come just to try out. It’s a huge deal for the students.”

As York mentioned, auditions are held for fifth and sixth graders every year. In 1990, Jennings had 40 Soundsational Singers. That number has grown to 54 in 2024/25, an indicator of the group’s popularity, and reputation.

“My brother got in two years ago, so I thought ‘Hey, maybe I can get in,’” said sixth grader Madison Wettlaufer, who chose The Star Spangled Banner for her tryout. “When I found out I had made it in, I was filled with so much joy. I was so happy.”

The Singers perform everywhere and anywhere they’re needed, throughout the community and across the state and beyond. Every other year, the group either heads to Lincoln to sing in the State Capitol’s Rotunda or somewhere further for an overnight trip.

They’ve wowed crowds at Mount Rushmore, Kansas City’s Crown Center and The Mall of America in Minneapolis. Jennings has sent Singers to perform at the Nebraska Music Educators Association (NMEA) Conference and, last July, four Singers received a standing ovation at NCSA’s Administrators’ Days in Kearney.

“It’s so fun when we travel,” said Jennings, “because there’s a lot of kids that don’t get out of this area too often. It’s a new experience for them. We always try to go to a Broadway show and things like that, too.”

Those memories never fade. Early on a Tuesday morning two days before Halloween, 15 Soundsational Singer alumni who now teach in the district spilled into their former music teacher’s room to reminisce and take a walk down memory lane.

“Now I feel old,” joked Jennings, who greeted each one with a big, warm smile.

They picked right up where they left off.

“You still reminisce on the trips,” said Blair Langan, a 2018 OPS graduate who now teaches Special Education at her old school. “We got to go on a lot of trips and perform in some pretty cool places. Also, you were pretty cool in elementary school if you were a Soundsational Singer.”

It was almost a status symbol, joked 2017 graduate and high school business teacher Emily Morrow.

“I’d say it definitely helped my love for music and made me want to join the choir in junior high and high school,” said Morrow, who is involved with the community theater to this day.

The kids can sing, there’s no doubt about that. You don’t acquire this kind of prominence without being awesome. What Jennings hopes for her kids, though, is much deeper than standing ovations and extra rounds of applause.

“I think the confidence they gain, that’s the most important thing,” she said. “That and having experiences they wouldn’t get elsewhere. I want them to gain an enjoyment and love for the music and for performing and sharing their gift with people.”

Now a second-year member of Singers, Aiyana Brown remembers being beyond nervous before one of her solo performances back in the second grade. In fact, she’s giving this interview standing in the very spot her music teacher knelt down and gave a few encouraging words that have stuck with Brown ever since.

“When I got up on the stage, I wasn’t really scared anymore,” Brown said. “She brought me out of my comfort zone and, now, I really just breathe and believe in myself. That’s all it takes.”

The stages are often quite big for a bunch of 11 and 12-year-olds, the lights often bright, but Jennings has an innate ability to get her Singers to believe in themselves. Still, the whole thing can be a little intimidating. Bennet Phillips has his own remedy for those moments.

“I usually do a couple warmups, and then I look for a family member in the crowd,” said the sixth-grader. “Then I just watch them the entire time I’m singing.”

For Langan, the memories of singing in the Capitol and touring Memorial Stadium afterwards remain vivid. It’s not a bad way to spend two of your formative years, either.

“You grow in confidence and time management,” Langan said. “Outisde of Soundsational Singers, there’s really nothing else you had to be at at a certain time in elementary school. I feel like we were well-traveled, too, which was pretty cool.”

Jennings has a group picture of every Soundsational Singers cohort that passed through this room hanging near the top of the wall. She’s not quite run out of space yet, but it’s an impressive sight. She’s touched that the program means so much to so many people.

York said the school’s beyond fortunate to have Jennings.

“Not every school has somebody like that who’s willing to do all that work and to invest in the kids like she does,” said York, a proud Soundsational Singer dad himself. “She would never brag about herself, but her programs have become such a big deal that the fire marshal asked us to split our Christmas program into two programs because we couldn’t fit everybody in the gym.”

Her Veteran’s Day programs are equally as awesome. Each grade, from first through sixth, performs a song for O’Neill’s Veterans. It never fails, year after year, that the older kids will sing along with the songs they remember from years past. 

Pretty soon, the whole school is singing together. It’s a powerful picture of what the music program means to this school and this community that sits on the footsteps of The Sandhills.

“I feel like there are just so many great opportunities for the youth here in O’Neill,” said Morrow. “The Soundsational Singers tradition is a great example. I don’t think there are many schools that have something like that. There’s just a great sense of community here.”

Morrow and Langan both agree that being a Soundsational Singer is a shared source of pride and a core memory for most everybody who’s ever been involved.

“I suppose you could attribute our friendship to Soundsational Singers,” Langan said. “That’s a cool way to look at it.”

Jennings runs into former Singers all the time. She sees them now and can’t help but to think of them back then. There’s almost a thousand of them, and their voices echo through this room until the bell rings and this year’s Soundsational Singers come filing in.

The students, dressed up for Red Ribbon Week, find their spots as their teacher takes her place at the front of the class. 

“I’ve wanted to be a Soundsational Singer ever since I was little,” said Brown. “I’ve always wanted to be a famous singer, and it brings me a lot of joy to sing with all of my friends.”

Mrs. Jennings gives them the signal.

She smiles, and then they sing.