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Wheeling Native Amanda McGovern Wins National Talent Competition in New York

Wheeling native Amanda McGovern won the American Pops Orchestra’s Next Gen: Finding The Voices Of Tomorrow competition in New York City on Sunday. (Screengrab via YouTube)

WHEELING — A Wheeling native’s prodigious singing talent propelled her Sunday to the top of a major national competition at New York City’s Lincoln Center.

Amanda McGovern, a 2021 Wheeling Park graduate and senior at West Virginia University, was named champion of the American Pops Orchestra’s 2025 NextGen: Finding The Voices Of Tomorrow competition. In that competition, collegiate vocalists from across the United States and Canada compete for the championship.

McGovern won Sunday with powerful renditions of Stevie Wonder’s “For Once In My Life” and the Grammy and Oscar-winning song “The Shadow of Your Smile” from the 1965 film “The Sandpiper,” besting nine other finalists for the prize. Hundreds of students enter each year for the chance to perform at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.

In a recorded pre-competition interview, McGovern said the love of music has been a part of her life and her family as long as she can remember.

“I grew up in a home that was filled with music,” she said. “It was always, always playing and I’ve always been surrounded by a family that loves and enjoys singing. So I’ve truly been inspired to become a singer and a performer by the love of music my parents brought into our home and into our daily lives.”

McGovern winning this honor was no surprise to teachers who have worked with her in her middle school and high school years.

WPHS choral director Joyce Jingle began instructing McGovern through private lessons when McGovern was a student at Our Lady of Peace School. She said it has been wonderful to watch that talented but tiny adolescent voice mature into the outstanding performer she is today.

“You can tell how much she cares about what she does, because she does put a lot of energy and effort into every performance and every role that she takes on,” Jingle said, “The thing that I think is special about Amanda is, yes, there is natural talent, but beyond the voice, the actual instrument, she has such a natural way of being able to communicate.

“So when she’s in front of an audience, she just captures that audience,” she continued. “That’s a gift that she has and I don’t think everybody has that.”

Bill Cornforth, the retired head of Wheeling Park High’s speech and theatre department, worked extensively with McGovern in Park Players, the school’s theatre troupe. He also could see the potential that catapulted her to her latest honor.

“I’m so thankful I had a student like Amanda,” he said. “She’s such a talented singer and actor, but she was a hard worker, too, to improve herself. Every time I see her, and I’ve seen her in her WVU productions, she just keeps getting better and better.”

On top of her WVU productions, including playing the role of Phoebe in “Phoebe In Winter,” McGovern also recently performed with the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra for its annual Symphony On Ice event at WesBanco Arena.

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