Valentina Amaral

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. 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. 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. 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. North Carolina won by the same score in the final. 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.

Amaral started all 20 games and kept 6 shutouts as a redshirt sophomore in 2025, earning third-team All-ACC and third-team All-American recognition. 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. She made the roster for the 2022 FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup initially as the backup to Victoria Safradin. 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 appeared to stop. 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. She was called into a development camp, training concurrently with the senior national team, in January 2026.

Honors and awards

Wake Forest Demon Deacons NCAA tournament runner-up: 2024

Individual Third-team All-American: 2025 Third-team All-ACC: 2024, 2025