The Knightly News

Kellan Cupid is nothing short of an anomaly.  Despite being a full-fledged actor and a member of the school’s dance team, Cupid decided to join North’s football team—in his last year of high school.

“I’ve always wanted to do football, but senior year was my first opportunity to do it,” Cupid said.  His former school, East Brunswick Vocational and Technical School, where he attended his freshman and sophomore years, did not offer the sport, and he transferred to North too late in his junior year to participate in football because pre-season starts over the summer.

But Cupid is not entirely a newcomer to the sport.  Like many children, he played recreational Wildcats football when he was younger.  He also loves to play games with his friends after school.  “It’s not like I haven’t touched a football in a long time,” Cupid said.  “But it is kind of like starting over again, so I’m pretty raw to the [game].”

Cupid plays football because he feels rewarded by the game results.  He said, “It’s such a great feeling of satisfaction after all the hard work and time that we’ve put in to be able to score touchdowns and beat other teams.”  Cupid is the team’s wide receiver and safety, as well as a part of the special teams for kickoffs and punts.

His contributions to the team come at an ideal time, as the football team is sorely undermanned.  The team doesn’t have enough players to fill out a full varsity roster, so freshmen must dress for varsity games.  “I think the lack of players makes it so that everyone has to work two, three times harder than everyone else in our division.  We have to condition hard and just prepare a lot in order to meet [the standards that other teams] have,” Cupid said.

These preparations paid off during North’s homecoming game, when the team won 28-10 against Princeton High School.  “We haven’t had the best record with our homecoming games, so after the game it was like a mini party in the locker room,” Cupid said.  “For some guys, it was our last homecoming game, and it meant so much, especially to our class, to pull out a victory.”

Outside of football, Cupid also is part of the dance team.  “His involvement in dance is pretty rad.  I think it’s cool that he’s helping out the dance team and expanding his extracurricular activities,” senior and fellow dance team member Isaiah Garrovillas said.

But Cupid has the greatest passion for theatre and acting.  He has acted in many plays and two short films so far, Recess and The Medium, which he just finished recently.  In The Medium, which is an adaptation of the opera by the same name, Cupid plays Toby, a mute, mistreated boy.  As of this writing, he has received a callback for Law and Order and will be waiting for results soon.

In the future, Cupid plans to continue acting and hopes to major in computer science and psychology.  Cupid said, “I want to minor in psychology because that will be so beneficial to acting since acting is emulating human behavior.”  However, Cupid does not think he will play football in college.  “Unfortunately, college football is very hard to do, so I think this is going to be my first and last year,” Cupid said.  “But I will definitely still play football with my friends in pick-up games.”