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Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Meet our 2025 Grads to Watch from southern Maine
Jun. 8—This month, thousands of young people are making one of life's great transitions at high school graduations across Maine. Each year, we highlight 10 seniors who have shown they have what it takes to make a difference in the world. This year's standouts include top scholars and athletes, several musicians, artists and social activists, a few immigrants, a plumber in training, a technology whiz, a filmmaker and a future physician. They have overcome language and cultural barriers, family crises, everyday teen insecurities and the challenges of living in a polarized, post-pandemic world. Their intended careers include law, politics, business, advocacy, counseling, government, advertising and public health. They have accomplished so much already, and we're excited to see what happens next. — Tristan Choi — Waynflete School — Matthew Fagerlund — Scarborough High School — Maya Faulstich — Yarmouth High School — Asher Knott — Baxter Academy — Nasir Manahe — Gorham High School — Michelle Matos Galva — Deering High School — Amara Roberts — Kennebunk High School — Eden Saylor — Greely High School/Portland Arts and Technology High School — Roberto Tshimayi Ngaba — Thornton Academy/Biddeford Regional Center of Technology — Kaia West — Portland High School ------ TRISTAN CHOI Waynflete School The summer after his freshman year at Waynflete School, Tristan Choi spent two weeks on a service-learning trip to a rural village in Nepal. In the foothills of the Himalayas, they built a chicken coop, planted trees, filled potholes and trekked with Sherpa guides. They repaired the roof of a school dormitory, where they also slept and shared meals with local students. It was a challenging experience that pushed Choi and the other American students out of their comfort zones so they could harness empathy and focus on the needs of others. "It was intentionally uncomfortable," he said. "Discomfort helps you learn." The experience led Choi to immerse himself in learning more about who he is, how he can connect with others and what he can do to help solve some of the world's most pressing problems, including homelessness, human trafficking and access to education. Choi's family moved from Arlington, Massachusetts, to Portland shortly before he enrolled as a freshman at Waynflete, where he has been a top student and athlete, playing soccer and captaining the crew team. Growing up, he spent some holidays with his father's family in New York, where they enjoyed traditional Korean dishes including rice, crab and glistening sweet potato noodles called japchae. Other holidays were spent with his mother's family in Freedom, near Waterville, where plates were filled with turkey and all the fixings. Choi came to see himself as a bridge between two ethnic communities that make him whole, he said. "Moving to Maine was like diving into a part of my heritage," said Choi, 17. "Maine is a part of who I am, and I've grown to love it even more." As a sophomore, he attended a national student diversity leadership conference in San Antonio, Texas, where he found himself in a meeting room with about 400 private school students who identified as Asian or Pacific Islander. "I had never felt that before, seeing so many people like me," he recalled. "I was struck and empowered by the experience." The following year Choi started the Asian Students Association at Waynflete, which now has about 20 members. He hopes it will continue with help from his sister, Acadia, who will be a sophomore in the fall. He also co-founded Waynflete's Community Engagement Program, which helps students establish long-term volunteer relationships with nonprofits. He met with Portland officials to address homelessness, was an intern with the League of Women Voters of Maine and worked at Bay Club Fitness. He plans to study business and philanthropy at Swarthmore College, with a long-term goal of developing more ethical, community-based models of capitalism and leadership that emphasize collaboration. "I envision myself as a problem-solver who sees the whole picture," Choi said. "Someone who sees not only how things have been done, but also how they could be done more efficiently in the future." ------ MATTHEW FAGERLUND Scarborough High School Matthew Fagerlund's fascination with technology took hold during the pandemic, when he was attending middle school classes online. While others struggled to unmute themselves in Zoom meetings, Fagerlund was dissecting every computer at his family's home in Scarborough. He took apart and reassembled two old Dell laptops, then attempted to install a newer operating system in one of them. "With the lockdown, I had an abundance of time, and I wanted to learn more about computer hardware," he said. "According to Microsoft, Windows Vista wasn't supposed to work on a laptop with Windows XP, but I wanted to make it work. I think I got pretty close." That itch to understand the inner workings of computers propelled Fagerlund to become a driving force in technology innovation at Scarborough High School, including a recent foray into artificial intelligence. In addition to being a leader of the school's robotics team, he is a founding member of a technology help desk that was established so students could better understand and use their devices. He also built a complete computer algebra system in BASIC programming language as a study tool for Texas Instruments calculators. "It could solve all of the mathematical questions you would encounter all the way through your senior year," said Fagerlund, 18. "It took me a year and a half in my spare time." He also developed an optical character recognition program that converts a teacher's handwriting on a digital whiteboard into clearly formatted, easy-to-read text. More recently, Fagerlund worked with a team of students and technology staff to build a secure, in-house artificial intelligence system similar to ChatGPT, the website that generates human-like responses to a wide range of questions or prompts. The team presented its AI system last month at the annual spring conference of the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine. The system doesn't have a name yet, and the district is still working on how it will be accessed, he said, but teachers have already used it to produce more engaging lesson plans and testing materials. "It's one of the most exciting things I've ever done," he said. "AI isn't about replacing humans. It's about helping them work better and more efficiently." Fagerlund volunteered regularly as an adviser to robotics teams at other schools and as a referee at robotics competitions across Maine and New Hampshire. This summer he'll work with software engineers at Tyler Technologies, and he'll head to the University of Maine this fall to study computer engineering. "I want to work on integrating different technologies together so they work more efficiently for people," he said. "I like when I can see what I do every day is more than just a hobby project." ------ MAYA FAULSTICH Yarmouth High School Maya Faulstich traces her interest in the environment to many family adventures spent kayaking, camping and cross-country skiing. Her most precious memory of her late oma — her grandmother who grew up in the Netherlands — is picking daffodils in her garden when Faulstich was a little girl. "The most important moments of my childhood were spent outside," she said. "My whole life, I have been surrounded by people who see nature as being really important to our well being." Those early experiences led Faulstich to create Dishes on Demand, an award-winning dish-lending program at Yarmouth High School that provides reusable plates, bowls, cups and utensils for sports team dinners and other community events. She started the program as a way to stem the growing amount of plastic trash she saw everywhere, including at Yarmouth High dinners that she attended as a member of the cross-country running and skiing teams. She read about a returnable takeout food container program in North Carolina and thought she could do something similar. She pitched the dish-lending idea to her parents, who helped with the initial purchase of reusable plastic dinnerware and stainless silverware. She launched the program in September 2022 and the following spring won $1,000 as a finalist in National Geographic Society's Slingshot Challenge, which recognizes solutions to environmental problems. She invested the money back into the program. Since its inception, Dishes on Demand has kept more than 16,500 pieces of disposable tableware out of the waste stream, according to the program's website. Ecomaine, the Portland-based regional waste incinerator and recycler, gave her a 2025 Eco-Excellence Award for outstanding student leadership in sustainability and environmental education. She also received the 2025 Student of the Year Award from the Maine Environmental Education Association, which called her "a beacon of sustainability in her community." "I think people want solutions, and people are happy that someone is doing something about it," Faulstich said. Now 17, she has promoted various waste-reduction efforts as a leader of the high school's Environmental Action Club and a member of the town's Climate Action Board and the state's Materials Management Task Force. She has spoken widely on various environmental issues, including testifying before the Legislature as a member of Maine Youth for Climate Justice. In addition to being a top student and athlete, she is an accomplished artist, singer, songwriter and musician who has been selected regularly to participate in annual district and state choirs and has recorded her own songs and videos. She plans to study environmental science and policy at Smith College. "I want to have a say in what happens in our world in the future," she said. "I want to use a background in science to inform policy decisions and the people they impact." ------ ASHER KNOTT Baxter Academy Asher Knott's film, "Back to Class," opens with a slightly surreal, "Mission: Impossible" style scene. Knott, alone in his home, gets a mysterious call requesting that he make a documentary, with one caveat. Then, his smiling döppelganger hangs up the phone. A multidiscipline artist who also takes photos and creates digital art, Knott is a senior at Baxter Academy, the Portland STEM-focused charter school. Knott, who lives in Windham, was drawn to Baxter because of Flex Fridays, a program that gives students every Friday to work on a year-long, self-directed project. His past projects included a narrative spy movie, a product photography series and a film about another student's engineering project. For his senior year, he decided to highlight the projects of a dozen other students with "Back to Class," a half-hour documentary that combines artistic shots, talking-head interviews, smooth transitions, music and a little bit of whimsy. "People can tell you about their projects, but this is what actually happened in the moment," he said of the film. Knott's passion for filmmaking started in middle school. During the pandemic, teachers allowed greater flexibility for projects, and he started using a GoPro and iMovie to do assignments in video form. He saved up to buy his own gear and started practicing filmmaking, photography and editing on his own. At Baxter, Knott got involved in student publications and did formatting and layout for the student literary magazine The Baxterian and the student newspaper The Baxter Buzz. He also worked on the 2025 yearbook and designed its cover. Knott said when it comes to filmmaking, he's always been good at putting all the pieces together in service of an end product, and applied those same skills to the magazine, paper and yearbook. "You imbue it with creative vision, what makes it look good in the end," Knott said. "I can take it, I add my flair to it, add a bit of interest, make it flow together." A true multi-disciplinarian, Knott is passionate about music and also competed in doubles tennis all four years of high school at his local Windham High School. Knott thinks of filmmaking as a hobby but can see graphic design as a career, which is why he's going to Keene State College in New Hampshire next fall to study it. He's considering working in advertising, where he wants to put his own stylistic spin on ads, or perhaps continue to work on design for publications. ------ NASIR MANAHE Gorham High School Nasir Manahe grew up working at Sindibad Market in Portland alongside his father and three uncles, conversing with customers in Arabic and building relationships with the community. "That place is really important to me," Manahe, 18, said. "Because that's where everything started." Manahe and his parents were living in Baghdad, Iraq, when his uncle immigrated to Maine and opened the Middle Eastern market. They followed in his footsteps and moved here in 2010, when Manahe was 3. Initially, they lived in Portland before moving out to Gorham in the middle of Manahe's freshman year. At Gorham High School, he said, it was difficult to make friends because the students already knew each other. But soon he met people through wrestling, where the family atmosphere and structure quickly drew him in. "It taught me about friendships, it taught me about discipline, it taught me how to keep my head straight, it taught me how to take care of my body," he said. It wasn't long until Manahe was enmeshed in the school culture, and when Gorham High needed someone energetic and not easily embarrassed to wear the ram mascot costume at a cheer competition, all eyes turned to him. He went on to be the mascot at more school events, and also helped coach youth wrestling and played football his senior year. Manahe is also deeply involved in the local Muslim community. He helped to start the Al-Rahman Mosque in Portland, where he now volunteers doing handiwork and teaching Arabic to kids. He was one of the founders of the Muslim Students Association at Gorham High, a small group that gets together to bond over their faith and help the Gorham school community understand Ramadan. "I don't think I'd be here without my faith. I think I'd be in a very different place," he said. "When I'm stressed, I go and pray, and I feel like everything is OK again." One thing Manahe said he prayed on was his academic future, after getting advice from his mom: just think about now, and let God handle your future. Manahe will attend the University of Maine next fall, where he plans to study psychology and pursue a career as a therapist. "I know how to talk to people, and people like talking to me," he said. ------ MICHELLE MATOS GALVA Deering High School While attending a predominantly white high school in Miami, Michelle Matos Galva joined the Dreamer Girls Project, a group of Black teenage girls who review sexual health policies created by the Yale School of Public Health. She was searching for a community, and found it, along with an academic passion. Matos Galva, who recently graduated from Deering High School, has been interested in medicine as long as she can remember; she played with toy doctor sets as a kid and always excelled in science classes. But it was Dreamer Girls that introduced her to public health, and the idea that access to medicine in the United States is disparate across racial groups. "As a woman of color, I see in my everyday life a difference in how Black women are treated in the United States and how that translates to health," she said. When it comes to areas like sexual health and menstruation, already taboo subjects, Matos Galva, 18, said disparities for groups like young Black women can be especially high. That's why she wants to be a doctor. "If we're not the ones making (interventions), how are they going to be effective?" she said. Through Dreamer Girls, Matos Galva meets with other Black girls to provide feedback on a Yale professor's STI and drug use intervention programs, and presented at an HIV conference about prevention among Black girls. Matos Galva was born in the Dominican Republic, grew up in Miami and moved to Maine, where her father is from, for her junior year. She found Deering to be a diverse and welcoming school and quickly got involved with groups like the Black Student Union, of which she's now a Cabinet Representative. Matos Galva had the opportunity to work in a research lab for the first time last summer, where she dissected cricket embryos to understand how they recover from injury. The six-week internship at Bowdoin's Horch Lab was part of a Maine program for high school juniors interested in STEM research, and the experience set her on a path toward neuroscience, which she plans to study along with public health at Brown University this fall. Along the way, Matos Galva has found ways to explore her passion for public health in Portland, through working at the Frances Warde House, a transitional home for pregnant immigrant women facing homelessness. There, she teaches English, helps collect data on the residents' health care experiences, and said she has connected with the women — most of them Angolan and Congolese immigrants — over the similarities and differences in their cultures, like family, food and language. "I just like the community aspect of it," she said. "Interacting with the women in the house, it's taught me a lot." ------ AMARA ROBERTS Kennebunk High School Amara Roberts has found inspiration close to home and far afield that has fueled her personal growth and her understanding of the world. Born in Ethiopia, Roberts was adopted into a vibrant single-parent family in Kennebunk when she was a year old. Her mother, Lisa Roberts, had three children with her late husband and adopted 11 more from the U.S. and other countries. Eight are still living at home, ages 3 to 25. "It can get very hectic," Roberts, 17, admits. "We've never had a small car — it was a huge van when I was little, and now it's a Suburban — and there's a lot of chairs around the dining table." Growing up in such a large, diverse family, Roberts learned how to be patient and open-minded, she said, and how to compromise and cope with the challenges of everyday life. "We're all different, but we share the same love for each other," she said of her siblings. "There's a built-in support system for all of us. There's always someone I can go to if I need something." An honors student at Kennebunk High School, she took several advanced courses through the International Baccalaureate program and the University of Maine. That experience gave her a broader understanding of what's happening outside her mostly white community, she said. "I came to see the world a lot differently," she said. "It made me a better writer and a critical thinker." No longer feeling like a bystander, Roberts became a leader and social media coordinator of the Model UN club, where she not only practiced the skills of discussion, debate and diplomacy, she also learned to speak up for herself and others as a passionate social justice advocate. Her interest in global affairs grew through an internship with the Association of Former Intelligence Officers of Maine, a Kennebunk-based group that hosts speakers and other public events related to U.S. foreign policy. Roberts interviewed guests in advance for social media posts — most recently Ronald Neumann, former ambassador to Afghanistan — and helped run meetings, holding the microphone for audience questions. "It was so cool to interview (Neumann)," she said. "I learned a lot and it was great to see older people coming together to learn. That whole experience really solidified my interest in political science." Roberts also worked throughout high school, starting at age 14 at Dairy Queen, and now as a sales associate at Dock Square Clothiers and a hostess at the White Barn Inn, racking up about 30 hours a week. She plans to study political science and pre-law at Fordham University and credits her mother with helping her get this far. "She really goes above and beyond for me every day," Roberts said. "She was always meant to be a mother." ------ EDEN SAYLOR Greely High School — Portland Arts and Technology High School Eden Saylor sees carpentry as both a practical and creative pursuit. Which makes sense, because the Cumberland graduate, who attended Greely High School and Portland Arts and Technology High School, is heading to trade school in the fall with the ultimate goal of becoming an artist and working on furniture design and sculpture. Saylor, 18, joined the drama club at Greely because she was interested in arts and found her place on the tech crew. She fell in love with set building while working on a production of "Little Shop of Horrors." "You'll just build an entire world, a whole different country or a whole house, and it's just fake," she said. "I like the illusion behind it." After doing a short apprenticeship in lumber work, a guidance counselor suggested Saylor check out PATHS, the Portland-based technical school. She joined its carpentry program during her junior year and calls that the best decision of her high school career. "It opens a lot of doors that regular school wouldn't," Saylor said. "PATHS is my favorite part of the day." There, Saylor has worked with other students to build sheds and an entire modular home and practiced cabinetmaking for a statewide competition. In her free time, she likes to build furniture in the PATHS woodshop or challenge herself with projects that require new techniques, like putting hinges on a door. Saylor credits her carpentry teacher, Frank Kehoe, with fostering her passions and teaching her skills. As the only girl in her carpentry program, Saylor said it has been difficult, sometimes, to handle the "bro culture" and occasional bullying. But she learned not to let that distract her, and her teachers say she has navigated those situations with directness and maturity. "You have to let things go," she said. "Which is not to say that you should let them get away with things." Saylor said her parents, who are both physicians, have been supportive of her trades-based career path. Her dad is a casual craftsman, and her grandfather was a cabinet maker. She even inherited some of his tools, although she never got to know him. Saylor will attend Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor next year, with plans to spend a year learning how to weld and benefiting from Maine's free community college tuition program. Then, she has her eyes set on art school in Boston, where she wants to blend her technical skills and artistic eye by studying furniture design and eventually working on large-scale sculptural installations. ------ ROBERTO TSHIMAYI NGABA Thornton Academy — Biddeford Regional Center of Technology Roberto Tshimayi Ngaba went to school grudgingly when he lived in Angola and Brazil. "I didn't want to go to school," he said. "Here, I want to go to school because if you know what you want and you work hard, you can be successful." Ngaba, 18, has found success at Thornton Academy in Saco, where he is graduating, and at Biddeford Regional Center of Technology, where he has one year left to complete the plumbing and heating program. He already has two offers for an apprenticeship set to start this summer. The oldest of five children, Ngaba and his family fled violence and persecution in Angola when he was 10. They spent several years in Brazil before making the harrowing journey north to the southern U.S. border, often on foot, sometimes going days without food or clean water. His parents decided to come to Maine because they heard from other migrants that it was quiet and safe, Ngaba said. They arrived in 2022, first staying at a hotel in Freeport, then at a hotel in Saco, where they now rent an apartment. His father, who was an obstetrician in Angola, works for a cleaning company, he said, and his mother works at an elder care facility. "We are really happy where we are," he said. "But it was really hard in the beginning. We had to ask everybody for everything. It made us feel very fragile." Attending school also was difficult at first, especially because Ngaba could speak Lingala, Portuguese and some French but no English. "I couldn't even say hi," he said, so he scrambled to catch up. Soon after he he started at Thornton, a family friend suggested that he take advantage of career training offered to area high school students at the technology center in Biddeford. Ngaba spent his junior year training to be a certified nursing assistant, then switched to plumbing and heating his senior year after learning it was a more lucrative field. His plumbing instructor, Frederick Jokinen, helped him overcome language and cultural barriers. Ngaba learned quickly, gaining a reputation as a go-getter and earning a spot in the National Technical Honor Society. He has worked part time at Walmart for a year — a job he plans to give up when he begins an apprenticeship that will pay more than $20 an hour. He will resume training at the technology center this fall to complete the two-year plumbing program. He plans to continue his studies at Southern Maine Community College and eventually operate his own plumbing business. Ngaba said he enjoys designing and building plumbing systems piece by piece. "And you can make really good money," he said. ------ KAIA WEST Portland High School Kaia West has been in and around water as long as she can remember. But she wants those who haven't to feel just as safe near Portland's pools, rivers and coastline. "Learning to swim is a privilege, but it should be a right," West said. The Portland High School graduate was a captain of the Portland-Deering co-op swim team, where she's been a part of two state championship wins. The distance swimmer also competes on a local club team and works as a lifeguard at Old Orchard Beach. West was struck by reports of drowning tragedies in Maine, especially among immigrants and refugees, and she couldn't help but think of her sister: they're both adopted, West from the U.S. and her sister from Ethiopia. "It struck me how fortunate I was to grow up with this privilege," she said. "I realized that I wanted to help others gain that necessary skill." West and a classmate became certified Water Safety Instructors and began offering lessons to fellow students at the Boys & Girls Club pool during a free period. While working with new swimmers, many of them multilingual learners, West said she grew her skills as a communicator and learned how to demonstrate swimming skills with her own body. That project eventually grew into the organization Maine Community Swimming, where West is now an instructor and board member. She's now helped nearly 100 people learn to swim. West's focus on equity also led her to get involved in Portland High's student government, where she held various leadership positions before being elected student body president her senior year. During her tenure, she revolutionized the student council, adding representatives of affinity groups to make the student government more reflective of the school's diversity, bringing free period products to school bathrooms and creating a committee of students to meet with administrators and provide their perspectives on big decisions. Portland High Principal Sheila Jepson awarded West the 2025 MPA Principal's Award, and described her as a "force" for her student government leadership, swim instruction work and her commitment to other activities, including band and Model UN. West is going to Smith College next fall, where she plans to study government and conduct paid research for her first two years thanks to a prestigious scholarship. It was her experience with Maine Community Swimming, West said, that led to an interest in government, particularly grassroots efforts. After college, she hopes to work in a field like public-interest law. "It's made me realize how much I want to continue work like this that has a tangible impact on individuals," she said. "I love seeing the impact." Copy the Story Link
Daily Mail
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Massive Super Bowl champion is dwarfed by his son in surprising high school graduation photo
Listed at 6-foot-4 and 260 pounds, Brandon Jacobs still ranks among the biggest running backs in NFL history. The two-time Super Bowl champion with the New York Giants was typically pictured standing head and shoulders above teammates, such as Ahmad Bradshaw, a fellow running back generously listed at 5-foot-10. So when fans saw Jacobs being dwarfed by his son Brayden at the latter's high school graduation, they were understandably curious: How big does one need to be to make Brandon Jacobs look small? The answer, according to Brayden's listed height and weight, is 6-foot-7 and 320 pounds. 'My guy is done with High School!!' the elder Jacobs wrote on X alongside a picture of himself and 18-year-old Brayden as he graduated from Milton High School in Georgia. More than 200 responses soon followed, many of which referenced Jacobs' former teammate. 'Wow,' one fan remarked. 'He makes you look like Ahmad Bradshaw.' 'Who knew someone could be even bigger than Brandon Jacobs?' another asked. 'What have you been feeding him, sir?' read a follow-up question. One fan correctly guessed Brayden's height: 'The boy is huge, he must be 6'7' or more, by comparison to Brandon!' Young Brayden was a staple around the Giants' facility in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where Brandon's wife Kim brought the family by for visits. Although Jacobs was known as a fiery competitor who was occasionally confrontational with media, he admittedly has a 'soft side' with his children, as he told the New York Times after Brayden's birth in 2008. 'I'm not mean,' he said. 'That's just football. That's just the way you've got to go. You can't go into a game that is that violent and be soft. You can't be that way.' For better or worse, football looks like it will remain the family business. Brayden committed to play football at Clemson in 2024 and will join the Tigers this fall as one of the most coveted offensive-line recruits in the country. The Milton (Georgia) High School product was a four-star prospect who was ranked as the No. 51 prospect in the nation by 247Sports.
