The daughter of Brazilian soccer player Leandro Amaral, she was born in Brazil before moving to the United States with her family when she was six.[2] She began playing soccer with her two triplet brothers and specialized in goal at an early age.[3] She played youth soccer for Florida Kraze Krush, where her father was a coach,[3] and earned ECNL all-conference honors.[4] She was a backup goalkeeper for Oviedo High School in Oviedo, Florida, and instead played at forward, leading the team with 19 goals in 12 games as a sophomore.[5] She was ranked by TopDrawerSoccer as the No. 19 prospect of the 2023 class.[6]
College career
After missing most of her true freshman year, Amaral became the starter for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons in her redshirt freshman season in 2024.[7] In the regular season, back-to-back shutouts against No. 2 Virginia and No. 1 Stanford made Wake Forest the first team to beat the top two ranked teams consecutively; another win against Florida State ended a 32–game unbeaten streak for the reigning champions.[8] Amaral made a season-high six saves in the NCAA tournament quarterfinals against USC. After a 2–2 draw in regulation, she saved a penalty kick and missed one herself in a 4–3 shootout victory.[9] In the semifinals against Stanford, she made four saves including one off the goalpost as Wake won 1–0 to advance to the first national title game in program history.[10]North Carolina won by the same score in the final.[11] Amaral had 6 solo clean sheets (9 combined) in 19 games, while setting a program record of 0.69 goals against average, and was named third-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference.[12]
International career
Eligible to represent Brazil or the United States internationally, Amaral first trained with the United States under-14 team at age 12 and went on to attend training camps at the under-15 and under-17 levels.[3][13] Shortly after becoming a United States citizen in 2022, at age 17, she was called up for friendlies for the first time, playing in games against Spain and Germany.[2][14] She made the roster for the 2022 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup initially as the backup to Victoria Safradin.[15] She played and started in two games at the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup, a 4–0 group win against Morocco and a 1–1 quarterfinal draw with Nigeria. The latter ended in a 4–3 shootout loss in which Amaral was ruled to have jumped early on the only attempt she saved.[16][17] The following year, she made her under-20 debut at the 2023 CONCACAF Women's U-20 Championship, starting in a 4–0 win against Jamaica in the group stage.[18]
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