North Yarmouth Academy celebrated the graduation of 40 seniors and two postgraduates on Sunday.

Walking across the stage in Yarmouth, the graduates from the class of 2025 represented 23 Maine towns, as well as one other state and country.

Graduate Zachary Leinwand gave the principium, and Adrian Mendoza gave the cum laude address. Broadway’s Haley Bennett, a 2009 graduate of the academy, was the commencement speaker. Bennett is a music supervisor, music director, conductor and coordinator living in New York City.

Featured below are two exceptional members of the North Yarmouth Academy class of 2025.

NOAH REISCHMANN

Noah Reischmann grew up in Pownal, sailing with his family’s schooner company. Having been homeschooled until eighth grade, his first time going to formal school was his freshman year at North Yarmouth Academy.

Despite growing up on boats, his first time on sailing team was the summer before high school. After joining SailMaine’s Southern Maine High School Sailing Team, he racked up nautical miles racing six days a week, eight months a year throughout high school.

“I’ve been on the team for eight seasons, so it was a long ride, but I mean that those are some of the closest people in my life right now are on that team. … It’s been a great time,” said Reischmann, whose family now lives in Portland.

He said his friends at North Yarmouth Academy describe him as “someone who doesn’t seem to talk a whole lot at first but can talk too much once you actually know him.” They also describe him as “laser-focused” on subjects that interest him, but “completely unfocused on other things.”

In academics, Reischmann’s laser focus on areas of interest, such as math, does not interfere with his generosity. His geometry teacher, in appreciation of Reischmann’s leadership in her class joked that “even though I could often make my answer key based on Noah’s work, he has a kindness and humility that meant even the least confident of his classmates was comfortable asking questions and working together with Noah.”

This fall, Reischmann will be studying physics at Bowdoin College and joining its competitive sailing team. Reischmann hopes to combine academics and athletics, as he is interested in using physics to better understand sailing and potentially design boats in the future.

“I could talk for a long time about how physics relates to sailing, but yeah, it’s purely physics based,” he said.

With North Yarmouth Academy in Yarmouth and alumni across Maine, SailMaine’s team making trips to Peaks Island, and soon the addition of the Bowdoin campus, Reischmann values creating community throughout the local area.

“Just having those connections to all the local places, I really treasure that,” he said.

The past two summers, Reischmann has also crewed a racing schooner from Maine to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Before stepping onto Bowdoin’s Brunswick campus, he’ll be sailing the schooner to Bermuda this summer in his longest journey yet.

“I think it’s like 700 or 800 miles,” he said, “and so that’ll be my first ocean crossing. So I’m really excited for that.”

OLIVIA HAMILTON

Olivia Hamilton took an uncomfortable experience and used it to advocate for others.

Her freshman year, she had a negative interpersonal encounter that she said she suppressed and did not want to talk about for a long time. Yet when looking for a social advocacy project for North Yarmouth Academy’s academic distinction program, through which students undertake independent projects, the memory returned to Hamilton in a new light.

“That was kind of a light bulb moment,” said Hamilton, who lives in Raymond. “The situation that I went through really bothered me, but maybe through this distinction, I could turn it into something that really empowers other people and can help other people not find themselves in the same situation.”

Hamilton completed an independent study this spring by taking Stanford’s online course in International Women’s Health and Human Rights.

“It was a really powerful course, because, you know, I have issues that I’m very passionate about in our little area of southern Maine. But then I was totally unaware of things happening globally, so it was really nice for me to have that perspective,” she said.

She also founded the One Love Club at the academy, a chapter of a national nonprofit that educates young people about healthy relationships with the goal of empowering them to avoid abuse. Certified as a One Love youth ambassador, Hamilton co-led a session on healthy friendships with the academy’s third and fourth graders.

“In a nutshell, she took a global issue — women’s safety and health — and brought it to a small scale at NYA,” said Betsy Tomlinson, director of character and community programs at North Yarmouth Academy.

Hamilton said that North Yarmouth Academy motivated her to step outside of her comfort zone, from her independent study to athletics. The three-season activity requirement first got her involved with track and field. Hesitant at first, she fell in love with the sport, serving as the captain of the last two years.

Hamilton said the school encouraged her to take classes that she found intimidating, such as Advanced Placement statistics, which she enjoyed to her surprise.

She will study public health at Tufts University in Boston this fall.

Hamilton is “a stellar student, earned a Diploma with Distinction in Social Advocacy, is a track and field and cross country athlete/captain, and overall, simply awesome,” said Tomlinson.