Dorsey senior Amirykal Hamilton is a member of the Donnas flag football team. Attending Dorsey is a family tradition for Hamilton as she had over 15 family members attend the school, and it motivated her to leave her mark on the campus.
Along with being on the inaugural girl’s flag football team, she is the student body president at Dorsey.
“It pushes me to bring something more than what they did when they left,” Hamilton said. “That’s what motivated me to run for president.”
This year marks the first time Hamilton competed in a sport outside of her experience in competitive cheer. She was proud of her effort after competing in her first flag football game.
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“I was happy that I was able to play the whole game without getting tired, giving up on myself,” Hamilton said. “I was surprised about how I played.”
Her favorite part of flag football is snatching the flags of her opponents.
In competitive cheer, she learned the importance of teamwork and about having strong communication skills. Those skills also helped her in flag football.
“When you’re putting people in the air in cheer, communication is a big key,” Hamilton said. “That’s something I can help the team with.”
A major lesson that Hamilton learned from competitive cheerleading is to not give up and to push herself to improve.
“I used to be like “it’s too hard, I’m not doing it, I’m giving up.” I gave up a lot,” she said. “Now, I’m like “it’s hard but I’m gonna keep going, I can get better.””
Being a student athlete means having good character, according to Hamilton. Character plays a big role in every endeavor.
“You can be the best player in the whole world, play all the sports,” Hamilton said. “But if you have a bad attitude, if you don’t know how to work well, which means people are not going to work with you.”
Her favorite class is government. Hamilton enjoys helping others find their voice to speak up on different issues.
“I like taking people who don’t know how to be heard and letting them be heard,” she said. “I’ll do anything, get in trouble … to speak up for something that’s right.”
While working on senior class and student body duties, she’s happy to get help from her leadership team.
“It’s not just me, it’s everybody putting their input in,” Hamilton said. “Sometimes somebody may think of something that I would have never thought of, so everybody’s ideas combine together.”
Through Dorsey, Hamilton was able to go on an HBCU college tour, Clark Atlanta University was one of the schools she visited. She aspires to study film and communications at Clark Atlanta.
“I want to come back to LA and make all my movies at Dorsey,” Hamilton said. “I want people to see the positive impact that I had.”
