Dunn manifests creative spirit through singing, basketball

Throughout her life, senior Marissa Dunn has grappled with balancing her two passions of basketball and singing. Now, she’s become comfortable letting the two overlap. Photo courtesy of Marissa Dunn

Marissa Dunn plans to release her first album this year. Yet, at this exact moment in January 2020, she is simply focused on learning the proper rhythm of a shooting drill. She’s been given clear instructions: move here, cross over and come back to the right hand.

After all the years she’s spent playing the game and the four seasons she’s suited up for the Chapman Panthers, Dunn has come to believe that basketball is a rigid sport, with little room for interpretation or freelancing. On the court, she keeps herself under control. In order for her to properly execute this drill, her mind sorts the steps into a musical pattern she can understand. Dun-da-dun-da.

When Dunn was younger, this habit would confuse her. She would receive assignments from teachers and end up with products completely unlike those of her classmates. She’d feel like an outsider.

“It was like, ‘Why am I seeing this so different?” Dunn said. “Why did I hear it so differently than other people did?”

Yet that creative spirit also manifested itself in her talent for singing. It was an outlet for her natural performing spirit. When she was younger, she would gather her family in her home for impromptu shows. It remained an outlet years later when she wrote one of the first songs she performed live, “Mirrors,” about her experience in high school developing an eating disorder and dealing with pressure from social media and the idea of maintaining an ideal woman’s athletic body.

Now, as she’s developed as both a songwriter and performer, Dunn has found a passion in the art of conveying her feelings.

“I put everything that I feel onto paper, onto a music sheet so others can relate,” Dunn said. “(Performing is) when I feel my most self, because I can let go. I can know that people who are listening, whether they like it or not. It’s fully me.”

Her voice – which can be discovered through a click on her Instagram page where she has amassed over 5,000 followers – is surprisingly lower in pitch compared to her regular tone. It’s smooth, dripping with honey; a “mature, blues-y voice,” according to Dunn’s former vocal teacher Dennis Bryan Coppens.

She is on the verge of releasing her first single in March, but at times it’s been an internal struggle for Dunn to balance her two passions: music and basketball.

With singing, an artistic endeavor, she could let loose. With basketball, a rigid game with less room for error, she had to rein it in. Back-and-forth, tug-and-pull.

“It’s like a light switches on and off. I hate being hyper about basketball – in fact, I never listen to music before I play; I notice that it makes me too excited,” Dunn said. “But with music, it’s the total opposite. I can hit whatever note I want, and that feedback isn’t going to be bad.”

During her junior year at Chapman, she tried out for The Voice and barreled through until the round prior to auditioning for the executive producers – the last before securing a spot on the show. Everything was going according to plan, except one small detail: her latest tryout was on the same day as her team’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III tournament match. Ultimately, Dunn was able to reschedule her tryout to the day before the game.

Throughout her career, she’s felt strongly supported by head coach Carol Jue and other members of the team in pursuing her off-court passion. On the way to the tournament match in Minnesota, Dunn wrote a song she still calls one of her best-written to date.

“I remember (feeling like) ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be focused on this right now, this is not good, I need to be focused on my team, we have a big game,’” Dunn said. “But it almost was better that I let it develop.” Now, a visit to a Chapman home game might yield a listen to Dunn singing the national anthem, something Jue said she hoped Dunn would do more often since she doesn’t remember the team losing when she sings. Opposing players might even catch Dunn humming during her free throws.

“When I was younger, it needed to be two different things,” said Dunn of music and basketball. “But as I’ve gotten older and I’m confident in who I am, there’s a lot of times where I’m sitting and watching a play, and I’m thinking, ‘What’s a good idea for a music video?’”

Dunn has high hopes. She wants to win the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), and advance again to the NCAA playoffs. A devout Christian, she hopes to build up the confidence to incorporate some of her religion into her music. Though she’s officially graduated from Chapman, she’s still growing and hopes to share her journey with others.

“I’ve always been the type of person to just put my heart out there,” Dunn said.