Starry night in the forecast

A field of 60 entrants has been whittled down to 12.
On Friday, one of them will win more than $1,000.
The Jay County Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural Stars in the Park talent competition will culminate at 6 p.m. Friday at the Hudson Family Park amphitheatre with the semifinals and finals.
“I think it’s going really well,” said John Boggs, one of the event’s organizers, following the third of four quarterfinal rounds on Aug. 1. “It seems like it’s growing. I think word of mouth is really good.
“One of our goals was to get people out to the amphitheatre, and I think tonight’s crowd really shows that. And hopefully the finals will be really good.”
The Stars in the Park field is down to the final 12 following four quarterfinal rounds.
The quarterfinal competitions had 12 hopefuls apiece, with the top three, based on voting by fans and judges, advancing to the semifinal round each week.
Friday’s finale will follow much the same format, with the top 12 performing in the semifinal round. After an intermission to tally votes, the top three acts will perform one more time with the big prize on the line.
The winner gets $1,250. The runner-up will follow with a prize of $500, while third place and the 18-and-older and 17-and-younger fan favorites will get $250 each.
Among the semifinalists is 22-year-old Jay County High School graduate Holly Rittenhouse. She competed in the quarterfinals on her birthday — Aug. 1 — earning a place in Friday’s semifinal round with dual talents of singing and playing the keyboard.
She said she has been impressed with the talent she has seen on the Hudson Family Park amphitheatre stage.
“I think this is a really great thing,” Rittenhouse said. “It’s pulling people from other places. … It’s great that Portland is providing a place for people to share what they can do.”
Thirty of the 48 quarterfinalists — the field was cut down from 60 after initial auditions — were singers. That pattern held true through the first three quarterfinal rounds, as seven of the first nine semifinalists were vocalists.
That group includes Karlie Bullard (Dunkirk), Madonna Duran (Bryant), Alexis Heath (St. Henry, Ohio), Lot Holmes (Portland), Annette Huelskamp (Maria Stein, Ohio), Rachel Shade (Hartford City) and Rittenhouse.
Zechariah Landers, a Portland resident and student at Indiana University, earned his spot in the semifinals with his classical guitar playing.
And the only semifinalist from the first three quarterfinals that doesn’t involve singing or playing an instrument, or both, to advance from the first three quarterfinals is Brylee and Ivy.
The only act that doesn’t involve singing or playing an instrument, or both, to advance from the first three quarterfinals is Brylee and Ivy. (For the three semifinals from the last quarterfinal competition, see the front page of today’s newspaper.)
Ivy Anderson (Muncie) and Brylee Koontz (Gaston) are a tap-dancing duo that earned the approval of the crowd and judges in the second quarterfinal on July 25.
“It made us feel like we did really good with our dance,” said 11-year-old Brylee of reaching the semifinals. “Just knowing that a lot of people like our dance means a lot to us.”
The competition got off to a hot start, literally, as temperatures for the first quarterfinal on July 18 were in the 90s. But the weather has cooperated since then, with crowds getting larger at each successive quarterfinal competition.
That’s a trend chamber of commerce executive director Vicki Tague hopes to have continue Friday.
“We hope that this place is absolutely packed,” she said. “The attendance is growing every week. We hope for the semifinal and final evening we have — it’s hard to say “standing room only” when you’re outside at a venue like this — but we hope that just hundreds and hundreds of people show up.”[[In-content Ad]]