A Pittsford Student Is Heading to Broadway — What the Jimmy Awards Mean for Addie Schulitz

When Addie Schulitz walked out of the Stars of Tomorrow competition this spring with Rochester's Jimmy Award nomination in hand, she carried something that doesn't fit in a program book or a trophy case — the kind of recognition that only comes from years of showing up, in rehearsal rooms and on school stages, through every performance that only the people who loved her most ever saw.

She earned it. Now she's heading to Broadway.

From Mendon High to the National Stage

From Mendon High to the National Stage

Addie Schulitz, a student at Mendon High School, has been selected as one of Rochester's two official nominees for the 2026 Jimmy Awards — the National High School Musical Theatre Awards. The selection came through the Rochester Broadway Theatre League's Stars of Tomorrow program, the regional competition that identifies the area's top high school musical theater performers and sends two of them to compete on a national stage in New York City.

Stars of Tomorrow isn't a participation honor. It draws from schools across the greater Rochester region, and judges evaluate not just vocal ability but stage presence, acting craft, and the kind of presence that reads from the back row of a house. According to the Pittsford Central School District, three Pittsford students were nominated for Stars of Tomorrow this year. Addie was selected from that field as one of Rochester's two official Jimmy Award nominees — the students who will represent this region in New York City.

Being named a nominee means that judges who know the difference looked at the field and decided she belongs on that list.

What does it mean to your town when one of its students earns a spot that performers across the country are actively working toward?

Pittsford's Double Showing

Pittsford's Double Showing

Addie wasn't the only Pittsford student to make noise this cycle. Ainsley Teeters, a student at Sutherland High School, reached the top 10 final round of Stars of Tomorrow — a remarkable achievement from a different Pittsford school, in the same competitive year.

Two students. Two schools. Both in the top tier of a regional program that spans the entire Rochester area.

This isn't coincidence. It's the product of what Pittsford has quietly been building inside its performing arts programs for years. The preparation that shows up on a competition stage doesn't happen in a single rehearsal. It happens because directors push, because students stay late, and because a community makes a choice — year after year — to take its young performers seriously. Not as a nice extracurricular, but as genuine artistic development.

The gift these programs give isn't just a performance credit on a college application. It's a sense of what's possible. A high school student in Pittsford can set their sights on a career in the theater and find people around them who treat that goal as reasonable, not reckless.

What does a community build, over years of quiet investment, that produces two students from two different schools reaching the top of the same competition in the same year?

What the Jimmy Awards Actually Are

What the Jimmy Awards Actually Are

For anyone outside the theater world, the Jimmy Awards deserve some context — because "high school competition" doesn't quite capture what this is.

The Jimmy Awards — officially the National High School Musical Theatre Awards — were named for legendary Broadway producer James "Jimmy" Nederlander, whose family has operated some of the most celebrated theaters on Broadway for generations. The program was created to give the country's best high school musical theater performers a platform that matches their talent: an actual Broadway stage.

Regional nominees travel to New York City each June for several days of workshops, rehearsals, and intensive coaching with working Broadway professionals — choreographers, music directors, casting directors — before a live performance and award ceremony at a Broadway theater. Not a high school auditorium. Not a rented community hall. A Broadway theater, with the lights and the seats and the full weight of what that address means in the theater world.

Past participants in the Jimmy Awards have gone on to professional careers in theater and film — because the exposure, the coaching, and the network of peers they encounter during competition week plant seeds that grow into real opportunities. For many nominees, the week itself is as significant as whatever hardware they carry home.

For Addie, this isn't just recognition of what she's already accomplished. It's an introduction — to the world she's heading toward, and to the people already working inside it.

How to Follow Along

How to Follow Along

The national Jimmy Awards ceremony takes place in New York City in June. Updates on Addie's journey — including specific dates, ways to cheer her on from home, and any local send-off events — will come through Pittsford Central School District communications and the Rochester Broadway Theatre League website. Both are worth bookmarking if you want to follow along in real time.

This is one of those moments where a community gets to be a community.

Addie didn't get here alone. She got here because of teachers who taught her to listen as much as sing, directors who expected more than she thought she had, and an audience — in school auditoriums across Pittsford — that showed up Friday after Friday and made the work feel worth doing. The Jimmy Awards give her a Broadway stage. Pittsford gave her everything that got her there.

If you've ever sat in a Mendon auditorium on a Friday night and been genuinely moved by what you saw on that stage — this is what that was building toward.

What does it feel like to watch someone from your neighborhood step onto a stage that big?