“O say can you see…” The stirring lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner reverberated throughout a packed Maples Pavilion last Saturday as Stanford men’s basketball (14-7, 3-5 ACC) prepared to play the UC Berkeley Golden Bears (15-6, 3-5 ACC). The source of the melody? A group of men standing at center court, dressed in red blazers. Among them, a lone figure wearing a jersey and basketball shorts.
In a truly Troy Bolton-esque fashion, sophomore guard Ethan Kitch sang the national anthem with his acappella group, The Mendicants, moments before his team faced off against Berkeley.
“Just to be able to be part of two groups that are so supportive of me doing both things, I think is very special,” Kitch said.
Juggling a Division 1 basketball schedule with the commitments of a top-tier a cappella group can be daunting, but Kitch welcomes the busyness.
“It definitely takes a lot of time, but I don’t think it’s necessarily challenging,” he said. “It’s not really challenging when you get to go from practice, which I really enjoy, and then go straight to rehearsal, which I also really enjoy. The way I see it, there’s just so much to try to get done and so many experiences to try to have while at Stanford, so how can you maximize what you get out of it?”
At the Cal game, Kitch’s two worlds overlapped, an experience he says he will never forget. He credits both the basketball staff and his a cappella group for making his pre-game performance a reality.
“I asked Coach Smith whether it would be okay if I sang and he was so supportive of it, and I asked the group if it was okay if I just join them at half court and they were willing to let me do it,” Kitch said.
Basketball and music might seem like an unlikely pairing, but both have been a part of Kitch’s life for as long as he can remember.
“I’ve been playing basketball since I was three,” Kitch said. He described how both his father and older brother played the sport, so he was around it all of the time, watching and drawing inspiration from them.
Music played an equally integral part of his upbringing.
“My parents are both very musical, and I’ve been playing piano since I was six years old,” Kitch said, explaining that the reason he began singing was because of his former piano teacher. He said he did not enjoy playing classical music, so he made a deal that he would perform one classical piece for every pop song he was allowed to learn.
“I wanted to play the music that I liked to listen to, and I basically started singing just so I could play the songs I liked,” Kitch said.
Although he thought his basketball career was over after high school, Kitch, as a Palo Alto native, had the chance to play pick up with some of the Cardinal basketball players during the spring of his senior year. Through those games, he got to know the coaching staff better and eventually walk on to the team during his first week of his freshman fall quarter at The Farm.
Around the same time, he looked to stay involved with music “in a way that was very social and not super serious,” auditioning for The Mendicants “on a whim.” As a member of The Mendicants (and their current social media manager), Kitch has been able to “learn from experts” and experience the different facets of Stanford.
“Basketball and The Mendicants get you introduced to people that the other one would never introduce you to,” he said. “I think that’s one of the magical things about Stanford, that you’re around excellence in so many different areas.”
Kitch stressed that his involvement in both activities would not be possible without Stanford’s culture of opportunity and flexibility, which encourages students to pursue multiple passions at once.
“I think what this experience really highlights about Stanford to me is that there’s a lot of excellence going on in such a diverse amount of areas,” Kitch said. “I hope more of my story is just about how cool it is that there are different parts of Stanford that can support somebody doing both of these things.”