Alex Fiscus is shown with the gold medal she won at the Indiana State School Music Association contest in Indianapolis.

SYRACUSE — There is still room for practice and hard work and it can still pay off. In February, Alex Fiscus, a junior student at Wawasee High School, personally experienced this.

Fiscus was a gold medal winner during the vocal portion of the Indiana State School Music Association contest Feb. 20 at Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis. She took on the difficult task of singing the four-minute Italian opera piece “O Del Mio Dolce Ardor.”

“It is well known in the opera world and is a very difficult piece to sing,” Fiscus said.

Fiscus first learned the opera piece while studying voice in a summer camp last year at Butler University. Though it took only about a week to learn the song, tweaking it to make it sound right took months. “The vowels in the Italian language are different; they are very pure,” she noted.

While at Butler, Fiscus was told she likely had a good enough voice to sing opera. She had been taking vocal lessons from Connie Meadows, who teaches choir at WHS. Meadows encouraged Fiscus to sing the Italian opera piece in contests.

When the day came for the state contest, Fiscus was both excited and nervous. She knew she had prepared well, but as is the case with any ISSMA contest there is a scoring process involved. So after she finished singing the piece, there was a time of anxiously waiting to allow the scores to be compiled.

Needless to say, when she learned she was a gold medal winner, the highest scoring category, there was relief. “I was very relieved and happy,” she said. “I worked many hours on that song.”

And it was especially gratifying because she had qualified for the state contest last year as a sophomore but had a scheduling conflict and did not attend.

Fiscus plans to pursue a career in musical theater with a likely emphasis on voice. It is too early to tell which college she will attend, but next fall she will begin auditioning at colleges. Fiscus is also actively involved in theater productions at Wawasee and has a lead role in the upcoming spring production.

Alex is the daughter of Paula Fiscus, a teacher at Milford School, and she has a sister, Gabrielle Fiscus, a freshman at Wawasee.