“I am a Catholic. I’ve been Catholic my whole life; my entire family is Catholic. And I love every second of it. But there’s so much negativity around the Catholic Church that I felt like I couldn’t voice my religious views. For the most part, I don’t think I’ve ever felt targeted for being Catholic, but it’s not a religion that is very liked. I genuinely feel that people are called to not be religious. As a Catholic, I feel like God calls people to not be religious. Those people help us grow as people to see outside of our religion and to see how other people see the world. And then, most of the time, you come to a common balance between those two, and then you can grow as a human and you can help other people grow as well. [My religion] helped me to stay positive in negative situations and it’s helped me get through a lot of things in my life. It’s helped me to grow and the teachings of the Church have helped me because they teach how you should treat other people who are not like you and how you should treat people who need your help. It helps me to be like a light for other people so that they can see, I hope that people see the goodness of God through me. I don’t think I would be the same person without religion.” 

“I’ve got this outstanding fascination with computers. We used to have a family computer and it was one of those big old beige box computers that you see in movies. It all started with online games and it was quite fun. I suppose that’s kind of spurred off from that where I was just always fascinated with this machine. I was trying to figure out how games work and how animations work. I played around with a lot of software then I moved on to trying to figure out how the computer itself works. I’ve built quite a few computers with my bare hands and it’s really cool. I do have a website. One of the amazing things about the internet is that there’s so much freely available information, that making a website is actually relatively easy and simple to do. The process itself is pretty simple. It was a very fun little project that I did.” 

“Growing up has gone by really fast. You don’t really think about how fast it has gone by until you’re almost a senior. I miss my childhood sometimes because I liked when things were easier. When you get older, decisions are harder and you have to go through life by yourself. When you’re younger, you’re more oblivious to problems. My childhood was really good. I lived in this old neighborhood house where my sister and I shared a room together. We were super close as a family and I had a lot of friends that I made memories with. It makes me sad that next year I’ll be graduating high school but I’m looking forward to being 19 or 20 when I’m in college. I want to be on my own and be independent. Growing up is just a part of life and it happens.”

“I had brain surgery in April of 2023. My skull was basically too small and so my brain had nowhere to go but into my spinal canal so I had to get my skull expanded. It felt like my head was gonna burst right off my body. [My recovery] was about eight weeks. I wasn’t able to go to school for over a month and I basically couldn’t do any of my daily activities. [It was a setback] maybe in an aspect of sports and social life, but not necessarily in other areas. [If you are going through this] definitely just get the surgery. It will definitely help in the long run and even though it’s rare, there’s multiple people who go through this.”

“You know, going into the football season, I didn’t expect a whole lot. I mean, I expected us to make our own story but I didn’t know how far we would make it. And obviously the two big losses we had against Gardner and Olathe North. Those are a few ups and downs. Gardner was just a great team, so that didn’t feel as much of a hit to me as Olathe North. I felt like that was a team we could have beaten and we just didn’t have a good game. And because of that, that was a big down. The emotions felt in the state championship game, I mean, you never feel that. It’s like a once-in-a-lifetime feeling. There’s no greater feeling other than maybe having a kid, according to coach Wier.”

“I remember the day that I started (doing theater) was one day in 7th grade when I was in ELT. On my first day, when I started I liked the environment, the people, and how they were kind. That’s why I enjoyed it. I liked being the reporter in the musical because it was my first experience in a high school musical and, when I watched it everyone was really good. It was really fun to see so many good actors on the stage. Especially compared to the middle school ones, they are much better.”