A Military Police Drill Sergeant from Fort Leonard Wood has won the Army’s version of “American Idol” or “America’s Got Talent.” Sergeant Christiana Ball has defeated eleven other finalists to win the Army’s ninth annual Operation Rising Star contest..
Two of the songs she sang during the contest were Trace Adkins’ “Til the Last Shots Fired”–
And Phill Vassar’s “American Child”
Ball gets almost $19,000 in prizes including three days in a professional recording studio to record a three-song demo CD that she can use to seek other recording opportunities.
But she says any thoughts of a professional career are some time away…
Ball was born in St. Louis but raised in Georgia. She’s a drill sergeant for a Military Police company at Fort Wood who told Operation Rising Star her singing is influenced by Allison Krauss, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless, and The Isaacs. “Music has always been a part lof my life,”she says, “It’s just what I love to do whether I’m alone in my truck or on stage.”
She says her husband, Stacy, encouraged her to enter the competition.
