Back in October, I wrote about Brianna Amat from Pinckney, Michigan. In the span of about 30 minutes, Brianna kicked the game-winning field goal at her school’s homecoming game and then was chosen as the Homecoming Queen.
She’s been feted around the country for what she did and has remained remarkably humble about it the entire time. From my piece on her at Angry Black Lady Chronicles:
Naturally humble, according to Pinckney Community High School Principal Jim Darga, Amat ceased giving media interviews Tuesday after spending almost all of Monday on the phone with media outlets.“She is not doing any more interviews,” said Darga, who has acted as a “buffer” between the blitzing media and his star kicker.
“She did interviews all day yesterday from the office, but she really wants to be in class,” Darga said. “She’s tired of it and wants to stay focused on classes and the team.She’s a very grounded individual and overwhelmed by this notoriety.”
~SNIP~
As of Tuesday, she’d been featured in the New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, USA Today, Fox News, Huffington Post, NPR, ABC News, NBC News, Yahoo! News, Boston Globe, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sports Illustrated, the San Francisco Chronicle and countless other media outlets around the nation.
On Tuesday, Darga said Amat turned down further invites from CNN and CBS.
According to her football coach, Dan Burkholder, she turned down an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show and a trip to New York City because she “didn’t want to miss school, and we have to get ready to beat Milford.”
Well, she’s back in the news:
In the days following her game-winning field goal over Grand Blanc on Sept. 30 — a kick she made after being recognized as Pinckney Community High School’s homecoming queen at halftime — her story was featured by the Daily Press & Argus, the New York Times, Associated Press, CNN, USA Today and, literally, hundreds of other media outlets and sports blogs.Last week, Amat amassed another accolade for her kick, this time from Glamour magazine.
She was one of 21 women under the age of 25 to be recognized with the magazine’s Young Amazing award at Carnegie Hall in New York City, all of whom were selected for “making a huge difference in the world.”
“It was crazy, to think something so simple as a kick could have gotten that much attention. I don’t see it as that big of a deal,” Amat said. “It could have happened to anybody.”
Flanked by young women who’d made advancements on ovarian research, founded an orphanage in Nepal and discovered a previously unknown supernova, Amat said she felt humbled to be around such a group of “amazing girls.”
“I felt inferior to these people in a way, because they’d done such crazy things and I’d made one kick,” Amat said.
The other girls didn’t see it that way, though. They wouldn’t stop telling Amat how cool what she’d done actually was.
Pure and simply full of awesome. Go, Brianna!
