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“Please rise as the West Point band performs our national anthem, ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, sung by cadet Haylee Ward, Class of 2025, company G4, from LaGrange, GA,” the Army PA announcer proclaimed to a packed Michie Stadium before the Knights’ matchup with East Carolina on Oct. 19.

Ward, a Troup High graduate, would go on to belt a rousing rendition of the national anthem in front of a crowd of over 29,000 people. It was likely the largest crowd Ward has sung in front of, but the West Point senior was feeling no pressure as a seasoned performer.

That Saturday two and a half weeks ago was the culmination of both a lifetime of music as well as her time as a member of the Glee Club on campus. 

“That’s one of the functions that the Glee Club has. We’re able to sing the anthem for a variety of events, and I’m actually the anthems officer. One of my roles at the academy is to facilitate those events, so we’ll have certain people reach out to us. The football game is always a consistent option… I’ve sung at the Army-Navy baseball game which is obviously on a smaller scale,” Ward said. “So I joined Glee Club freshman year.” 

“During our basic training, there was a time when I was injured and I had to stay back from this certain event. And while I stayed back, there was like another platoon near us. They had a guitar, and they were singing, and were just jamming out. And as I was singing, one of the, I guess you say, one of the mentors, was like, did you know that West Point has a Glee Club like you can really sing, you should join and I auditioned and made it.”

While Glee Club is where she gets to foster her love of music the most currently, she still stays involved in other musical avenues.

“I sometimes frequent the Gospel Choir, which is more like gospel soul music, church music, and we’ll sing at certain events,” Ward said. “I used to sing at church. I don’t do that as frequently anymore, because I’ve kind of switched churches that I go to.”

“There’s also another section of the Glee Club called The Nightingales. And it’s a small female acapella group. I’m also involved in that,” she added.

Ward played the saxophone in the Troup High marching band in her youth and dabbles with the guitar on occasion, but singing is her creative vice. 

Ward’s love for music stems from her father, Ernest Ward, threw her into the fire at a young age. The younger Ward got her first singing experience in the choir as a young girl and her love for music has only expanded and grown since those days.

“My dad threw me up on stage at church one day and was like, ‘You’re gonna sing at church. And I was kind of nervous at first, because I didn’t really want to sing in front of a crowd, but I’d say after that, I kind of found a love for it,” Ward said. “So I started by singing in the church, and then I played saxophone all throughout elementary or elementary school, but all throughout middle school and high school, I was in the marching band, and I also was very involved in musical theater at Troup High School, so I guess, just like the combination of those three things kind of just made me love music.”

Ernest did not just help foster a love for music in his daughter, he also encouraged her to go to West Point when she was looking for her next step after school. Ernest is an ex-military man himself, having served in the marines prior to Haylee’s birth. His deft touch helped lead Haylee on the path she is currently on.

“He was like ‘it’s a way to get out of town and learn a lot more. And diversify your perspective. You should definitely take the opportunity.’ So I didn’t know I was getting myself into but it was a free application, free college. And so I was like, Okay, I guess we’re doing this,” Ward said with a chuckle.

West Point is truly symbolic of the American melting pot. People from all walks of life, creeds and colors come from around the United States to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It is a place that a small town Georgia girl can find who she really is in, nearly 1,000 miles from where she grew up.

Ward also felt a calling to be a leader and felt like West Point is the perfect molder of aspiring leaders.

“So I thought about the Air Force Academy because as I was doing my research, there’s a lot of articles that were like, oh, the Air Force gets treated better. Or like, the Air Force has better facilities. They’re nicer,” Ward said. “But after really trying to research, there is an officer who graduated from West Point, who went to Troup High School as well named Clayton Shivers and he’s a really good mentor for me now. I reached out to him and asked him to help decide. He told me ‘if you go to the Air Force Academy, you’ll look around and they’re things like planes. They’ll have planes. Everywhere you go to the Naval Academy, you look around, they have boats. That’s cool. But you go to West Point, you look around and you see statues of people, and that is a testament to the leaders that West Point creates.’ And just like that I was in such awe.”

Fast forward nearly half a decade and in six months time, Ward will be wrapping her senior year and getting ready to graduate, though she is likely not done with college just yet.

“So West Point does have the option for select people who apply for scholarships to go to grad school right after West Point, which isn’t typical. Most people commission and go serve right away,” Ward said. “So I’ll still commission. I’ll be an officer. It’s just like, I’ll take a delay of two years and then go to the army. So that’s something I’ve also been looking forward to.

Once you are in one of the service academies, you get a multitude of different career paths to go down. Ward hopes to work in the medical- branch of the Army.

“Right now, I’m hoping to get medical service. I did get most preferred for them, so it’s looking bright, but we’ll see what happens,” she said. “So in medical service, there’s a specialty called the 72 delta, which is the Environmental Protection Officer. And currently my major is environmental science. So I’m really passionate about, you know, like cleaner health, cleaner, healthier and safer environments.

“I think also in the army, a lot of people look at the army as like a pollution source, like when you think about the weapons and you think about the mission of the army, I think they don’t think of it as being clean. So I think it’d be a very interesting perspective to have as I transition, maybe into a civilian sector of working on global sustainability, to have the perspective of what sustainability looks like in the army.”

Ward is enjoying her final run as an Army cadet before she becomes an officer. Though, it is still sinking in that her senior year is flying by so quickly.

“I think it’s like, every day, little by little, it’s like, oh, that could be the last time I ever do that. And so it’s definitely very sentimental. I would say I haven’t reached the point where people are hitting senioritis and counting down the days yet,” Ward said, laughing.