Brianna Lopes-Amorim is currently a senior at John F. Kennedy Memorial High School. Her passions shine as she is a dedicated soccer player, dancer, singer, actor and leader in the JFK community.
She is fully committed to attend William Patterson University in the fall.
What are you planning to do after high school? Where are you going to college and are you looking forward to the college experience?
Brianna: I am looking forward to the college experience. I’m enrolled in William Patterson University… I’m majoring in exercise science and I hope to minor in [American Sign Language] … I’m not sure if they have that minor available. I’m also looking forward to [seeing] if they have choir there. I might do an intramural sport, I’m not sure yet, but I know I have to finish my gen ed classes first.
I’m currently looking for a roommate, but they’re all impossible to deal with because nobody ever answers their phone, but, yeah, I’m excited.
What is your earliest memory that inspired you to pursue your chosen career?
When you [first start playing] soccer [and] you’re really young, they call you [a] ‘grassroot’ because all [you] do is sit down and pick at the grass. Back when I was still playing grassroot, I remember a kid got hurt and we had our mock ‘athletic trainers,’ [who] weren’t real athletic trainers because [we were] a bunch of toddlers.
I remember a couple kids would get scrapes on their knees and they would go to our ‘athletic trainers’ and I [would be] like ‘Oh, that’s so cool, they get to fix all the scrapes on their knees’ and they would give [them] a cool little band-aid and then [they’d] go back to picking daisies on the field because [we] didn’t actually ever kick a ball. That’s my earliest memory, but if I had to pick an actual memory, I would say our trainer, Alexis [Heeney] has inspired me a lot.
Can you describe your process for preparing for the role of Rosie in JFK’s Production of Mamma Mia? How did you balance rehearsals with other things such as choir, dance, social life, and academics?
It was a lot of rewatching the movie, trying to study her character, and translating a lot of her movie emotions to the stage because stage emotions have to be so much bigger than [a] movie. The audience has to see you from the back of the auditorium and you have to be a lot more dramatic and…you just have to be more. Her character in the musical is just a tad bit different from the movie, and she’s also on stage a lot less than she is on screen. She interacts with Bill, [Sophie, and Donna] differently, not too different from the movie, but different enough [that] I had to figure out how to translate it while keeping the same character that they had originally.
[It was] that and watching a lot of stage productions of other schools doing it, of Broadway, and Off-Broadway. Then I had to balance all of those [rehearsals] with my dance schedule and my soccer schedule, so it was just learning how to find time to rehearse my lines while also practicing, like, comp dances. I’d be in my studio and they’d be running the dance and I’d be in the back with my script. I was running the dance with my feet and running the script with my hands.
What are some challenges or obstacles that you faced regarding playing soccer for JFK in the fall? How did you overcome them?
I’d say adjusting from summer workouts to only having practices after school was an adjustment. In the summer, we’d get [to JFK] at 9:00 A.M. and we’d be here for three hours, and then tryouts [were] a whole week. We’d have a lot of time to bond and get a lot of stuff done during practices, and then after school, we would go straight from fourth block — God forbid you had a test — straight to the bus to go to a game.
So, it’s switching from test mode to ‘We have to get warmed up quick … we have to get locked in.’ It was not having that time to adjust that you did during the summer, because during the summer if we had scrimmages, we’d have all this time to warm up. We’d wake up in the morning and our only focus was ‘soccer, soccer, soccer’ … so that was the biggest challenge.
We know that you perform in JFK’s General Chorus and Treble Choir. Who inspires your love for music the most and how did they influence your passion for it?
In elementary school, I had a choir teacher, Ms. Williams. She was a character. She was very eccentric, she loved “I Love Lucy,” and everything like that. She was the first one who brought us to Six Flags to compete and that ignited my love for choir because she just made it so fun. I remember coming to JFK and thinking: ‘Yeah, I’m gonna [be in] the choir here, just to see what [it’s] like, and then finding out that it was also [Kyle] Casem’s first year. We both got to start together [in] the same year, we were both new to it, so there wasn’t any pressure to be perfect.
You have two cats, Peanut Butter and Lily. How did you and your family get the ideas for their names?
I had begged my mom for a cat for years and years. She kept telling me ‘No, we’re not getting you a cat,’ and then one day she just shows up with Peanut [with] no warning, no nothing. We didn’t have any supplies. I just come home and there’s a cat in my living room and I’m like ‘Okay, so who’s cat is this?’ She says ‘It’s ours.’ She works at a doctor’s office. One of her patients works at a warehouse and a cat mom had come in, had babies, and then left… So, the patient brought [one of the cats] from the warehouse [to the] doctor’s office, and then [my mom] brought it home. I’ve never actually bought one of my cats, they’ve all come from the cat distribution system.
I remember thinking, ‘I want a really stupid name [for my cat].’ … So, I named [my cat] Peanut Butter because her face is split down the middle. Half of it’s ginger and half of it’s black.
Then I got Lily and I wanted to name her Jelly, but she already had a name because I got her from one of my fellow classmates, Rachel [Gonzalez]. The cats [are] sisters, hers is Luna, and mine’s Lily. She already had a name [for her] and I didn’t feel right changing it. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna keep her as Lily.’ It would have been nice to have a Peanut Butter and Jelly, but now it’s just Peanut Butter and then Lily, which is a completely normal cat name.
If you could go back in time, what high school event or memory would experience again and why?
I think I would go back to [when I performed in] “Annie” [in] freshman year. There’s just something about that show that has such good memories [attached to it]. It gives me such nostalgia, even though it was only three years ago … That was my first intro to JFK theatre. That cast and the bond we made in that show specifically [was perfect] … I don’t think I had one single thing to complain about at all that whole show. [I] just [made] really good memories [at that time] and I’d love to go back.
In what ways have you grown throughout your high school experience? What were you like your freshman year in a way that’s different from how you are now?
[My] freshman year was horrible. When I say that [“Annie”] was good, I mean that it was the only good thing about freshmen year. I was very insecure … very quiet. I didn’t have as many friends as I do now [and] was also just a very visually and emotionally different person. I’d say I grew a lot maturity-wise, [like dealing] with my problems better, I learned [more coping methods], [I learned] how to study better, [and] I made better bonds with my friends.
I’ve had the same friend group since freshmen year. We stayed tight … but our friendships have matured because we learned how to interact better as adults … We’re 18. We have to go into the real world eventually. So, we’re getting prepped for that, and looking back [to] freshman year, I [think], ‘Why did I ever make those decisions? Why was I thinking and acting the way I did?’ I was crazy. It was insane.
What are you going to miss from high school the most and what are you not going to miss?
My underclassmen. I’m going to miss my underclassmen so much. My upperclassmen, we’re graduating together [and] I could always see them outside of school. Our college schedules are going to be much more lax than high school ever was, so seeing them is not going to be too much of a problem. But [right now, I’m] going to class with all of these people that I’m not going to be able to go to class with ever again, doing all of these afterschool activities — and in-school activities — with all my underclassmen who I’m not going to be able to see outside of school. They’re still going to be busy with high school and I’m going to be free out in the world … I’m going to miss coming to school and seeing all these people.
What am I not going to miss? Assignments. Waking up at 7:55. None of my college classes — I just got my schedule back — none of them start before 9:00 A.M. and it’s glorious. I get to sleep in. I’m not going to miss waking up early.
What’s some advice that you would give incoming freshmen?
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect. I know people who come in freshman year and they take eight thousand APs [and] they try [to get into] every single club. You don’t have to start all of that right away. You can take freshman year to ease in and it [won’t] make or break your career … freshman year is your time to accustom to [the] high school environment because no matter how much you think you’re prepared for it, you’re not.
You’re in middle school and you’re like, ‘High school’s not going to be that hard, it’s basically the same thing’ and then you get here and it’s wildly different.
No matter how prepared you think you are, you’re never going to be fully prepared, so take that year to slow down … [and] acclimate. And then sophomore year is when you could start to ramp [it] up, do your 30 thousand clubs, your 80 thousand extracurriculars, [and] your 37 AP classes. Whatever you want to do sophomore year, do sophomore year, but take freshman year to wind down because you’re going to need that time. It’s so different and you need that time to get used to it.
