Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Brianna Amat (video capture: WDIV)
Last Friday’s high school football game in the small Michigan town of Pinckney was no ordinary contest for the hometown team. The game against state-ranked Grand Blanc also was part of homecoming, and the senior voted queen really made headlines, thanks to her right foot.
Brianna Amat became the first homecoming queen in school history to be crowned at halftime and then kick the game-winning field goal to seal the victory.
A defender on Pinckney Community High School’s soccer team, she also took the team’s corner kicks and free kicks. When the soccer coach recommended Amat to the football coach, she agreed to give the new sport a try.
She won the job after beating out two boys. “She won the position on her own merit,” Jim Darga, the school principal, told The New York Times.
Amat, who has a 4.0 grade point average, is not the first female to play football for her school; another girl previously served on its junior varsity team. But she was the first girl to make the main squad in Pinckney.
Amat missed an extra point in the first half, but her team led 6-0 at the half. During the halftime break she was asked to come back out on the field because she had been chosen homecoming queen and needed to attend the ceremony. She received her tiara while wearing her football uniform.
In the third quarter Amat hit a 31-yard field goal that held up as the margin of victory (9-7) over Grand Blanc, which had been ranked as high as number 7 in the state this year. The kick was longest of her brief career.
-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff
After Winning Homecoming Title, Kicker Wins the Game (with Photo Gallery) (by Tim Robinson, Livingston Daily Press & Argus)
Michigan Homecoming Queen Kicks Game-Winning Field Goal (by Cameron Smith, Prep Rally, Yahoo! Sports)
The Kicking Queen (by Micheline Maynard, New York Times)
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