Brandon Rosa, a senior, is primarily seen in the public eye as a wrestler. What lies beneath the surface may be intriguing; he is actually very skilled at doing magic tricks.

“Ever since about third grade I’ve been into magic, but it really, like, shot up when I hit high school,” said Rosa. “It was just a ‘Oh I wanna find a cool hobby’ sort of thing.”

While Rosa doesn’t typically perform on the streets in Ripon, you can find him performing in the halls occasionally. He also performs in Monterey.

“I don’t perform often because Ripon is kind of a small place, but whenever I go down to Monterey I meet up with a magician I became friends with and we’ll go and perform on the streets,” said Rosa.

Brandon detailed the process he goes through to learn new tricks.

“Down in my old home town of Pacific Grove, I would go to a magic shop and I became really good friends with one of the people that worked there, his name is Michael,” Rosa explained. “He would teach me a lot of things and I would teach him, or I would go on the internet and watch videos and then break them down.”

Sometimes a trick goes wrong, but Brandon has learned to laugh it off.

“Besides dropping and spilling all the cards over everybody, the most entertaining things are the reactions that happen,” said Rosa. “Especially the kids. The kids will sometimes do the funniest things.”

What Rosa loves the most about performing tricks is that it helps him meet new people.

“My favorite part of Magic is meeting new people,” said Rosa.

Brandon’s initial inspiration for learning magic was, surprisingly, a movie.

“When I saw ‘Now You See Me’ I was like ‘I wanna do stuff like that.’ And then I saw a documentary on David Blaine and I wanted to be just like him,” said Rosa.