To sing the national anthem at the World Series in front of millions of people last year was a dream for Sequim’s Pearle Peterson. She said doing it again on Saturday seems unreal.
“Getting the news the first time was shocking,” the 19-year-old Peterson said over the phone from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“Nothing can prepare you for hearing it twice.”
Peterson will represent the Boys & Girls Clubs of America again and sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in Los Angeles for Game 2 of Major League Baseball’s World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. Game time is at 5:08 p.m. and will air on Fox 13 in Washington, and on Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV, YouTube TV and FoxSports.com.
“I’m so excited and of course nervous,” Peterson said.
Peterson is a three-time Olympic Region Youth of the Year for the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula and has been either attending or working at the Carroll C. Kendall Unit in Sequim for 11-plus years.
She said the club provided her somewhere to go after school, dependable meals, homework, friends and a place to “grow up in an environment where I could be authentic.”
The club offered Peterson her first job, and she worked there this past summer at morning camps. She even plans to work there on her winter and summer breaks from college.
For the last two years, she’s toured the country performing for the national Boys & Girls Club, NASCAR and many local events.
Mary Budke, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula, said leaders with the national organization reached out about Peterson coming back for the World Series because MLB asked for her.
“We’re not just super proud of her, we tell kids they can be the next Pearle,” Budke said.
“She has forged a new path. Pearle didn’t tell them. She showed them, and that’s remarkable.”
Budke said Peterson has remained grounded through her experiences as she’s appeared on a big stage one day and then come back to the club the next.
“She’s one of the hardest-working young ladies I ever met,” Budke said.
“She personifies what the Boys & Girls Clubs’ values and goals are. I can tell you the mission of the clubs, but Pearle lives it.”
Staff with the Sequim club organized a viewing party last year, and this year the World Series is during the Sequim club’s Halloween Bash. But Peterson will still be on its screens.
“It’s a big deal for us,” Budke said. “We’re gonna have our girl on the big screen, for sure.”
Preparation
Peterson left Sequim for college in August to pursue lyric theater at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“It’s so wonderful; this program is a hidden gem,” she said.
And while the major is a full-time job, “it doesn’t feel like it because I love it so much,” she said.
She said she’s been learning a lot, including better self care, too.
“I used to think I sang every day, all day, but I had no idea what that meant,” Peterson said.
Leading to her second opportunity at the World Series, Peterson said she has more time to enjoy the process, and she’s been taking care of herself while working hard on the anthem.
Prior to being chosen to sing at the World Series last year, Peterson was chosen as National Youth Talent Performer and performed across the country in 2023. Boys & Girls Clubs of America executives heard her and recommended she sing at the World Series as a representative for the national organization.
She has credited the Boys & Girls Club for helping her and feels her hard work led to cool opportunities.
“I’m so happy to be that example to other kids from small towns who want to get into the music industry,” she said last year. “I’m fulfilling what my younger self always wanted to do.”
Hometown, college life
Going from small-town life to college life has been interesting, she said, particularly “not running into people I know every day.”
The hardest part is not being by her parents, Jason and Kelsie, and sister Victoria, Peterson said, but she’s excited the trio are traveling this weekend to be with her for the performance.
Sequim club director Tessa Jackson said she’s incredibly proud of Peterson.
“It’s been an honor to watch her become the person she’s become,” Peterson said.
Budke said the community has helped Peterson with college through various forms of support.
“They opened their arms to this girl,” she said.
“They see her and congratulate her driving through for coffee, and service groups ask us to bring Pearle so they can congratulate her.”
Peterson said thanks to many local scholarships and from the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, her tuition is covered for this school year.
For more about the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula, visit bgc-op.org.
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Matthew Nash is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach him by email at matthew.nash@sequimgazette.com.
