Andy Goris started playing piano when he was four years old.

His mother, who was born and raised in Russia, gave Goris the same choice would give his younger brother about a year later: take music lessons or ballet lessons.

Little did Goris know that his decision would ultimately lead the Pittsburg High School senior to become a Division I Ranking performer in KSHSAA Piano Music Festival, as well as this week’s CapFed® True Blue® Student of the Week.

“I guess she’s just a very stereotypical Russian mom,” Goris said. “She wants her children to be involved in something other than sports. I guess she had an idea in her head and it kind of just evolved into being piano.”

But Goris said that his mom, Tatiana, pressed hard for ballet at first.

“She always had an interest in ballet. I think she did ballet when she was little,” Goris said.

Goris admitted that his younger self thought that ballet was “very girly” at that time, although it also did not sound as if his interest in the activity had changed into his teen years, even if some of his other interests did.

“I was very interested in soccer at the time,” Goris said, now a high school student that participates in wrestling and tennis at Pittsburg.

Even his choice in musical instrument changed, although really just made one quick change and he ended up sticking with that instrument for the next decade and a half.

“I started out doing violin, actually,” Goris said. “I went to two lessons and was like, ‘Yeah, this is not my thing. I absolutely hate this.’”

With his mom’s ultimatum still in play, Goris decided to give piano a try. He did not have the same outright rejection of this instrument, although Goris admits it was not an instant fit either.

“I can’t say I enjoyed it very much when I was first starting,” Goris said. “It was more of a task, but my mom was pushing it the entire time. I guess one day it kind of clicked.”

One thing that helped was finding a peer that also played piano. He doesn’t remember the exact reason for sure, but he recalls needing to find a new piano instructor when his first one moved away.

“We lived in Lafayette, Indiana at the time and she came down an hour from Indianapolis to give these lessons,” Goris said.

Goris’ parents found another instructor who lived in nearby town. She happened to have a kid of her own who was the same age as Goris.

“We became almost best friends at that point,” Goris said. “It became fun to go to piano practice because I got to see my friend. It was just amazing people that got me into it and it gave me a good experience.”

Eventually though, Goris and his family would end up being the ones who moved as they relocated to Columbus, Indiana. They found a new instructor, but that would also be short lived.

“I think she moved on to a teaching position at a university,” Goris said.

This time they found an instructor that worked at Indiana University. Goris enjoyed all of his instructors to this point, but this one left a lasting impression on him.

“She was so knowledgeable and she just had the ability to get her point across,” Goris said. “She just was able to envision the music in her head without even playing it.”

Sadly, that connection ended too soon as well when the family moved again, this time out of state. Goris’ mom got a job Pittsburg State University, where she still works to this day.

Goris would move between a couple instructors before finally settling on Dr. Rena Natenberg, professor and coordinator of piano graduate studies at Pitt State. In addition to studying abroad in Jerusalem, she had her own instructors who were Russian at one point in time.

Goris, a dual citizen who is fluent in Russian, was able to connect with Natenberg fairly quickly thanks to that connection. Many of Goris’ rotating group of piano instructors were bi-lingual like himself. And that’s not counting reading music, which Goris views as another language itself.

“Music is 100% its own language,” Goris said. “I think reading sheet music has helped me read in general, in English and Russian. On the Russian side, the Russian culture is very heavy on the arts, like music, piano and orchestra. 

“That background helped me a lot. I have something to relate myself to. I guess something to almost live up to, but not exactly.”

Goris’ Russian heritage has also ended up becoming an influence on that specific music he likes to play, at least in a roundabout way.

“I play mostly classical music,” Goris said. “I really enjoy playing Tchaikovsky for some reason. It just kind of comes easy to me and I really enjoy playing Tchaikovsky. Which is funny enough, because he’s Russian and I’m Russian.”

Goris’ parents met in Russia when his American dad visited Moscow decades ago and met Goris’ mom. In addition to both children having dual citizenship, the family has also visited Russia a few times. His mom made it a priority for Goris and his brother to learn Russian and stay connected to their heritage.

“My brother and I learned (Russian) at basically the same time,” he said. “It was pretty annoying at first. When I was young, my mom absolutely refused to speak English to me. Even if I answered in English, every time she would always talk to me in Russian.

“Now I understand why, because I had so many of these English influences on me and I was learning English, but didn’t have any Russian language influences around me.”

Goris said he now appreciates that she did that for him and his brother when they were still young.

“Now I have this ability to use this other language, that’s absolutely amazing,” he said.

Just like with Russian, a little push from his mom to learn piano has turned into something he’s truly come to appreciate as he reached high school. Goris said that his mom is hands off now, but he’s still as invested in playing piano as ever.

“It’s such a big part of me at this point, where I would feel like something’s missing if I were to drop it off,” he said.

Goris not only plays piano, along with clarinet, in music courses offered at his school, but he’s also applied those skills to other extracurricular activities. He started with jazz band and concert band as a freshman and sophomore. Now as a senior, he’s performed in multiple stage dramas at his high school at a member of the pit band.

“We did 'Mama Mia' and then we did 'Big Fish',” he said.

He’s excited to venture out of the pit and take his musical talents onto the stage for Pittsburg’s upcoming production of "Little Shop of Horrors" later this month.

“It’s my senior year, I just decided to try something new before I get out of high school,” he said.

Goris is trying to take advantage of the short time he has left in high school. He plans to graduate at the end of this semester and start college early in January. That means he’ll miss out on a chance to replicate his Division I ranking from last year’s KSHSAA Piano Music Festival.

He will also miss out on his senior tennis season. It’s particularly bittersweet because Goris had a setback that disrupted his junior campaign. Goris tore his UCL/RCL in his left hand during wrestling season last year.

“I had to play tennis with (the tear), which prohibited me from doing a two-handed backhand,” Goris said. “I think I performed really, really well for having that injury.”

In addition to having that physical limitation, Goris’ team has also had a different coach each of his three years playing for the Dragons.

“That was a little bit frustrating because each coach had different coaching methods and different expectations of how you’re supposed to play,” he said, finding that to be more frustrating than his similar experience with different piano instructors.

Goris feels like he performed well considering the circumstances, but he’s really looking forward to getting a chance to improve upon his wrestling results over the next two months, even if his wrestling season will end prematurely once again. 

He’d like to continue his tennis career at the college level, but he’s hoping a few things can work out to make that possible.

Goris said he currently has an offer to play for Marion University in Indianapolis. The school offers everything he’s looking for, with the opportunity to continue playing tennis and piano while majoring in pre-med. He has a deadline in a couple weeks to decide on accepting the offer.

But even after all his scholarships, the private school’s tuition would still cost an additional $20,000 per year.

“I’d have to apply for some other scholarships to cover that, cause $20,000 a year is very expensive,” he said.

If he can’t reasonably close the gap of that cost, Goris said he’ll probably go with Pittsburg State. He’s not totally against that possibility, but he definitely had a different plan in mind.

“I almost want to venture out on my own and not stay here,” he said. “There’s just something intriguing about going out on my own.”

Either way, Goris will keep his sights set on his ultimate goal of becoming a neurosurgeon. Just like with piano, Goris has been on the trajectory to becoming a doctor since he was just five years old. Unlike piano, it’s not something where he needed a nudge from his mother, although it’s hard to imagine she’d complain.

“We had a family friend that was a doctor and a great guy,” he said. “He was a big inspiration for me. That’s always been something I was shooting for.”

He doesn’t remember the specifics after all these years, but this doctor sat Goris down and talked all about what it was like to work in his profession.

From there, he started to become interested in the idea of neurosurgery and neuroscience while in middle school.

“We had some traumatic things that happened in the family, where traumatic brain injury was the result,” he said. “That happened when I was really young and thankfully they’re alive and well now, but that almost sparked my curiosity. I really wanted to help them.”

Goris said there’s also something really intriguing about the mysteries of the brain.

“We still don’t know like 90% of the things that we want to know about the brain,” he said. “It’s just a field where I can go into and explore almost.”

Goris is still open to the idea of going into heart surgery or orthopedics, among other fields, but neuroscience remains at the top of his short list.

“It’s just the unknown, anything can happen,” he said. “The field (of neuroscience) is going to explode in the coming years when discoveries are made. We could have advancements in so many things just because people are constantly making more discoveries. It’s just such an attractive idea to me that I could be a part of that.”

Well before he’ll ever get a chance to use his hands on the cutting edge of those altruistic medical discoveries, Goris will keep using his hands to set the scene for a floral shop worker who discovers benevolent flora as part of the school’s upcoming stage drama.