HOUSTON — Who would have thought being forced to sing at the 2015 Rammy Awards would send you to the Final Four?
Certainly not North Carolina men’s soccer player Nico Melo, who did just that, singing the national anthem along with student-athletes from Syracuse, Villanova and Oklahoma ahead of the first Final Four game Saturday night.
“We obviously got to the Final Four and they contacted me right away like, ‘Hey would you want to do it?’ And I had no idea (what they were talking about),” said Melo, a redshirt junior midfielder. “People were calling me like, ‘Are you going to do it?’
And I was like, ‘What, the Rammys again?’”
No, Nico. The Final Four. In Houston, Texas. At NRG Stadium. With thousands and thousands of people — including President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Joe Biden — in attendance watching you.
No big deal for an accomplished singer such as yourself, right?
“(I) never sing, besides in the shower and in my room,” he said, laughing.
Melo said he’s only sang in public once before, at the 2015 Rammy Awards when he sang “Ordinary People,” by John Legend with sophomore teammate David October accompanying him on the keyboard.
He doesn’t read music and he had no idea what Houston Symphony Chorus Manager Anna Diemer was talking about when she asked him about octaves.
