Kent Youth and Family Services<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWinners at the talent show also will perform June 18 at the Kent International Festival, at the city’s Fourth of July Splash at Lake Meridian and July 8 at Kent Cornucopia Days.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
All contestants were required to be Kent residents, students in the Kent School District or employees within the city limits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The preliminaries were in front of judges Patrick Briggs, executive assistant to the Kent mayor; Mychal Boiser, owner of the Kona Kai Coffee Co.; Dana Ralph, chairwoman of the Kent Arts Commission; and Dave Hobbs, city of Kent youth and teen program coordinator.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Judging criteria included a point system based on quality of content, presentation and overall entertainment value.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“A lot the scores were really close together,” Goodwillie said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The preliminary judges were glad they had the qualifying round rather than the finals because of the high talent level of the contestants.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“The judges were concerned about how the judges for the finals will even choose a winner,” Goodwillie said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The judges for the finals will be Kent Mayor Suzette Cooke; Debbie Theisen, campus manager at Kent-Meridian High; Ronda Billerbeck, city of Kent cultural programs manager; Bill Boyce, Kent School Board president; Polly Shepherd, Kent Reporter publisher; and Debbie Ranniger, a Kent City Councilwoman.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Steve Strachan, former Kent Police chief and now the chief deputy of the King County Sheriff\u2019s Office, will serve as master of ceremonies at the finals.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Goodwillie said she came away from the preliminaries impressed by the high level of talent.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“There is a wide variety of talent of all ages,” she said. “I think people who come to the show will be surprised.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
If you go<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\nWhat: “So You Think Kent Has Talent”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 21<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Where: Kent-Meridian High School Performing Arts Center, 10020 S.E. 256th St.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tickets: $10 at the door; or call 253-813-9630 to reserve<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten singers, a drummer, a pianist, a dancer and a dance group are among the 15 finalists for the first “So You Think Kent Has Talent” competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":6068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6067"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}