This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Braylyn Hoopes.
 
“I really love Christmas,” the Goessel junior said. “It’s my absolute favorite time of year.”
 
Her Christmas spirit officially arrives as soon as Halloween ends. But the spirit of the season – celebrating her faith, spending time with family and friends and giving to others – is something that Hoopes carries with her year-round. 
 
Which also comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Braylyn, this week’s CapFed® True Blue® Student of the Week.
 
“She’s a go-getter and someone who’s going to get the job done,” said Brian Lightner, Goessel’s activities director, high school math teacher and cross country and track and field coach. “She wants to be involved and she wants to make this school a better place. … She always has a smile, good attitude and works hard.
 
“She’s always a leader in whatever she’s doing and wants to have a positive impact in whatever she has her hands in.”
 
Which is always something. The daughter of Goessel girls basketball coach Ryan Hoopes, Braylyn comes by her willingness and desire to be involved naturally. Ryan’ school teacher page lists no fewer than six different activities he’s involved with for the school with undoubtedly many more going on behind the scenes.
 
So yeah, it was kind of engrained in her blood.
 
“She’s definitely used to being busy,” Ryan said. “We’ve been busy since she was in diapers, going to games and school events. If she sits around the house too long, she gets bored. She’s outgoing – she’s quiet and a bit reserved at times, but she likes to try new things. We’re pretty proud of her for what she’s accomplished and what she wants to do.”
 
Not surprisingly, something about the Christmas season brings Braylyn’s involvement into the spotlight. The president of Goessel’s Family Careers and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) club, Hoopes poured herself into the various aspects of the club, one of which is coming up with a STAR (Students Taking Action with Recognition) Event.
 
FCCLA members are able to compete at regional/district, state and national levels with their STAR Event, in which they are recognized for proficiency and achievement in chapter and individual projects, leadership skills and career preparation.
 
Last year as a sophomore, Hoopes had no trouble coming up with her STAR Event. And of course, it centered around Christmas and her love for the season.
 
“I wanted to share that feeling with the community and friends,” Hoopes said. “We didn’t get to do much my freshman year because of COVID and I really wanted to bring the community back together.”
 
In particular, she wanted some of the elderly residents of the Goessel community, namely those living at the Bethesda Nursing Home, to “feel more connected after the dark time they had during COVID.”
 
So she approached her FCCLA adivisor, Brittany Hiebert, with her idea of doing a Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony at the nursing home.
 
She said, ‘That’s amazing. Let’s do it!’” Hoopes said.
 
So Braylyn took charge. She contacted the nursing home to get the OK from the director to have the event. She then contacted Pine Creek Tree Farms to see about getting a tree for the event. Pine Creek donated a 10-foot tree.
 
She secured donations from the local Wal-Mart to decorate the tree, but also tapped into Goessel’s elementary school and the nursing home itself for additional ornaments. Grade school students painted wooden ornaments Hoopes had received and the nursing home residents made paper ornaments with their names on it, which Hoopes laminated.
 
She and her friends then spent a community day getting the tree from the farm and setting it up and then, on a chilly night, the lighting ceremony was held with Santa making an appearance.
 
“It was great,” Hoopes said. “It was amazing because they were so happy. They were able to walk around and talk to people and it was just great seeing them reconnect with people again, which is what we really needed at that point.”
 
The event has become a tradition with Hoopes organizing this year’s tree lighting ceremony as well. She had more help from FCCLA club members this time around and they spent time with the grade schoolers making their ornaments – glittery pine cones and peanut snowmen.
 
“I love little kids,” said Hoopes, who plans to go into education for her career. “It’s just so much fun being around them.”
 

 
While working with young kids is near and dear to Hoopes’ heart, so too are other aspects of her life. She’s devout in her faith and it’s something she’s not shy about sharing.
 
In fact, she’s very forthcoming about her devotion. And when she was a seventh-grader, it struck her that she could share that faith with others who felt the same way.
 
“I was at home reading my daily devotional and I thought, ‘This would be pretty cool to do something like this at school and get my friends involved,’” she said.
 
And just like that, Faithful Fridays began at Goessel where Hoopes and a handful of other students gather for a brief time before school for fellowship.
 
“It was something simple, but I felt it was something that needed to be done and was important,” she said. “Faith is very important and I thought it would be great to get people involved with that. It started small with my friends, but then it grew quickly. We had 10 people or so every Friday within a few weeks. It became something everyone looked forward to.”
 
Her efforts inspired a handful of high school students at Goessel and once Hoopes hit high school, she helped start the Bluebirds’ chapter of Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
 
Last year’s graduating senior class at Goessel was heavily involved with Hoopes in starting the club and the club has maintained its popularity after their departure. The group has participated in “See You at the Pole,” a global movement of prayer which is student-initiated and led and is held on the fourth Wednesday in September each year.
 
The club also has engaged in something similar after most home football games, meeting at the 40-yard line for prayer and fellowship among both teams, students and fans.
 
Hoopes said the fellowship was a benefit in helping her deal with COVID when isolation was prominent.
 
“Personally, it helped me a lot,” she said. “I set aside time to plan what we would talk about and it took my mind off a lot of the negativity that was going on. I think it did the same for most of my friends as well. It gave them an exit from all the chaos going on and we could talk about Christ and the positives out there.”
 
Hoopes is a three-sport athlete at Goessel as well, sandwiching basketball between running cross country in the fall and distance events in track during the spring. A lot of times during her training distance runs, Hoopes will listen to FCA Ted Talks – inspirational words from fellow teenagers – though more times than not she admits she thinks about movies.
 
“Which is silly, but I really like movies,” she said.
 
She also really likes writing. Hates reading, but loves to write. The summer after her eighth-grade year, she wrote a handful of articles that were published in the Newton Kansan newspaper, mostly about things that had impacted her life.
 
Family being a big one of those. And that led to a writing project that not only she, but the whole Hoopes family, will cherish forever.
 
Braylyn’s great-grandpa and Ryan’s grandpa, Dwight Hoopes, was somewhat of an enigma. Especially to Braylyn.
 
“He's always very quiet and never said anything, so I never really knew much about him,” Braylyn said. “He’d be at our family functions and would never say anything. That’s just how he was. He’d sit there and listen to everybody else’s stories.”
 
At one family function, Braylyn’s great-grandma, Shirley, suggested Braylyn interview Dwight for a school project. It didn’t really fit anything she needed for school, but the idea intrigued Braylyn enough that she decided to do it anyway just to learn more about her great-grandpa.
 
So in August 2021, Braylyn set up a camera in the Hoopes’ living room, settled Dwight into his rocking chair and began to ask him questions. She had all kinds mapped out, but eventually, the interview simply turned into conversation and a back-and-forth dialogue with Dwight on the other end of things, telling his stories about his life.
 
Dwight talked about his childhood and how different it was, not having running water, going to a country school in a one-room school house that he walked to. He talked about the sports he played, his service in the Air Force.
 
But mostly, Dwight talked about his love for his farming, how it was literally all he wanted to do and why he loved it so much.
 
“I had no idea how interesting he was,” Braylyn said. “It was always, ‘That’s my great-grandpa. He’s a farmer and that’s about it.’ ... When we sat down and talked and he told me these stories, it was eye-opening. I never knew what kind of life he’d had and how so much had changed throughout his life.”
 
What started out as plans for a simple paper grew into something much larger. By the time she was finished writing her great-grandpa’s tale, Braylyn had a book on her hands.
 
“It was really easy, took me a couple months, working on it off and on,” said Braylyn, who divided the biography into different sections of Dwight’s life and added pictures to enhance the content. “It just kind of flowed. I wrote it how I felt when he was talking to me and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
 
Ryan had once written and published a book – a Christmas tale called, “Ho Ho, Reeve, It Must Be Christmas Eve” that the family still reads every Christmas. He had it published through Lulu.com and when Braylyn finished her book, they went back to the site and now she is a published author as well with her book available at various online retailers.
 
She handed out copies of her book, “Simple Life, Special Soul” to every family member at Christmas in 2021, including to Dwight.
 
“He really didn’t say anything, except, ‘Oh, it’s a whole book!’” Braylyn said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I just kept writing and writing.’ He read it later that night and my great-grandma called me and said, ‘It was amazing and we just have to thank you.’ They both loved it so much. I was glad I could make them happy and tell his story from him. I wanted to write it just the way he lived it so we could understand him more. It was amazing I could tell my family who he was.”
 
The book took on even more meaning. Roughly a month after their interview/conversation with each other, Dwight was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Two months after Christmas, Dwight passed away in February 2022 at the age of 91.
 
“We feel like it was a godsend that she was able to do this book in time,” Ryan said. “We didn’t even know before she started doing it that he had cancer. It was a blessing in disguise.
 
“I think we were all blown away, one at the writing skills Bray had. She did an amazing job with this book, so we were all very excited about it. Some of the stories I didn’t even know and I farmed with grandpa up until the time I left the house. Things we never would have known if she hadn’t done this. It’s definitely something we’re going to cherish forever.”
 
Whether it’s giving back to her family, her school or her community, that’s the element Braylyn cherishes the most. She never mapped out a plan on what she wanted her intentions were at Goessel, but also has never been afraid to take whatever opportunity comes her way.
 
“I don’t really know,” she said about what impact she hoped to have at Goessel. “I just wanted to make it a better place. It was creating these traditions that bring joy and happiness and gets people involved.
 
“For the kids below me, mainly my little sister, I just want them to know that if you don’t take the chance on things you’ll never know if you could do it or not. Try as many things as you can because you don’t know you’ll like it or not unless you try.
 
“I just love being able to help other people. If that means even just going and sitting and talking to someone, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to help people out.”