For senior Haley Ryan, her experience on the stage extends far beyond the norm.

Ryan has been working to make her dream of being a singer come true by auditioning for The Voice, American Idol and participating in a summer camp run by the Grammy organization.

Ryan has been singing all her life, but it wasn’t long ago when she started getting serious.

“She became serious about singing during her sophomore year at LHS,” Haley’s mother, Carol Ryan said. “She always sang as a child though, especially karaoke at home.”

Ryan has been taking music lessons from Ashley Davis, an LHS graduate, since April of 2012.

“Since beginning lessons from Ashley, Haley has really grown musically,” Carol Ryan said “She now plays guitar and is able to accompany herself occasionally.”

This year, Ryan worked with senior Matt Rood to put together a duet for Showtime.

“I don’t often get to work with someone who will have such definite ideas at the beginning, and so we could bounce off of each other immediately rather than having to work for it,” Rood said.

Over last summer, Ryan participated in a camp organized by the Grammy organization. She was one of 24 students from Kansas accepted to the camp.

“There were close to a thousand applicants to that camp,” Ryan’s mom said. “She wrote and recorded her own music at that camp.  In fact, one of the songs she wrote drew acclaim from one of the Grammy camp producers.”

The camp was in Kansas City at the Sprint Center and had the students working with a few celebrities.

“We got to work with Fall Out Boy and Miley Cyrus’ writer and just like really big names in the music industry,” Ryan said.

During camp, Ryan got the opportunity to record in a studio every week. She especially enjoyed working with the band Fall Out Boy.

“They are definitely a very inspirational group of guys and they’re really fun to work with,” Ryan said. “They gave us a lot of cool feedback on our music. They gave us a lot of advice as to how to pursue the music industry and difficult and cutthroat it is but how worth it it is.”

The Grammy camp is not the only place where Ryan has crossed paths with celebrities or on their way to stardom.

Over the past summer, Ryan auditioned to appear on the television program The Voice, a reality TV show on NBC that is meant to find new singing talent from around the country. After sending in her audition tape, Ryan was one of the few that received a callback.

“There were 80 people called back out of the 10,000 that auditioned, so that made me feel really cool,” Ryan said.

After receiving the callback, Ryan then had to perform in front of two producers.

“I went to this warehouse [where] they had this giant stage set up and they took you up in an elevator and you would go and audition with the lights and the producers and everyone, and if they liked you they would send you to LA to go audition for the judges,” Ryan said.

Only 10 of the 80 people who auditioned were sent to LA, and unfortunately Ryan was not one of them.

“One wanted to send her to the TV show, the other said not yet, but invited her back to audition again,” Carol Ryan said.

Ryan hopes to return and audition again this summer.

“I really want to, I just don’t know for sure the details of when it is and if it fits with my job schedules and stuff that I’m doing this summer,” Ryan said. “I plan to go back if not this summer then in the fall. So, I will go back.”

Working at the summer camp and auditioning for The Voice has given Ryan a new perspective on the music industry.

“The camp really showed me that as much as I love the performance aspect and doing stuff like The Voice and auditioning there and doing things with that — as fun as it is for me — I definitely don’t think I have the drive that it takes to become as successful in music as I would love to be,” Ryan said. “I think that getting a college education is more important for me right now.”

But Ryan hasn’t completely ruled out a career in music. She is keeping her eye out for potential opportunities to make her music her career.

“Who knows, maybe something with music will open up and I would pursue that,” Ryan said. “I would love to do something with music, but I’m not the kind of person that can jump into a career that’s not sound.”

To Ryan, making music is not something that needs to yield profit. Music has much deeper meaning than that to her.

“Music is something that I’ll always have for myself,” Ryan said. “I don’t necessarily feel the pressure to go do something big with it if I’m content just having it for me.”