Belmont High’s Top 10 plan challenging careers in diverse fields

BELMONT — They are about to take different paths, but for the top 10 graduates at Belmont High School the past four years have been as much about sharing a common bond as they have about exploring individual interests.

Some played on the same sports teams. Others have been engaged in the same intramural activities. And all have sat in the same classroom at one time or another.

Now their paths diverge as they pursue the next stage in their education – roads they hope will take them into careers in health care, engineering, business, and the performing arts.

To say that valedictorian Cody York wants to toot his own horn is not an egotistical boast. York, of Canterbury, is moving on to the New England Conservatory of Music, where he will continue to study trumpet performance.

York, who started playing trumpet in the fifth grade, is drawn to classical music and hopes some day to play in a symphony orchestra.

“My dream would be to play in the Boston Symphony,” said York, who for the past two years has been studying with Benjamin Wright, the second trumpet with the BSO.

His drive to become a serious musician while still keeping up with his studies has meant practicing “at some odd hours of the night,” he explained.

His other interests while at Belmont High have included belonging to the astronomy club and earning a black belt in karate. He has particularly enjoyed studying Spanish, social studies, and courses in the humanities.

“There’s something within every subject that I like a lot,” he said.

Salutatorian Lars Major will be heading out to the University of Utah, where he will enroll in the Business Scholars Program.

The program entails visiting companies in the U.S. and overseas, networking with executives and top professors, building relationships with peers and presenting business case studies.

Major said his interest in business goes back to one summer when, as a kid, he and his brother operated a lemonade stand  in front of their dad’s home on Loudon Ridge Road.

“We didn’t make much money,” Major recalled. Either despite that early disappointment or perhaps because of it, Major is interested in starting his own business.

As a student, Major was a three-sport athlete, playing on the baseball and ski racing teams, as well as the soccer team, which he captained for two years. In addition he was active in Future Business Leaders of America and shadowed people working at a real estate development firm in the southern part of the state. He was also involved in Best Buddies, an organization which works with students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Like Major, Ben Hillsgrove, will be going to University of Utah to study business.

His interest in business has been nurtured during his four years working at Piche’s Sports & Ski Shop in Gilford, where he helped service bikes (“wrenching,” he calls it) as well as working as a sales associate.

“I’ve taken all the business courses offered in school,” Hillsgrove said. They “piqued my interest and I understood the content.”

Hillsgrove, who is from Belmont, played soccer and was a member of the school's new rock-climbing team. He was also part of the track and field team which set the school record in the 4-by-100-meter relay. Unfortunately he missed out on track his senior year because the school went to remote learning a week before training for the track team was set to start.

Hannah Leclair will be entering the University of New England in the fall where she plans tomajor in biology for students interested in becoming physician’s assistants.

“I find the body fascinating and how it can recover from trauma,” said Leclair, who is from Belmont.

While in high school, her growing interest in health care spurred her to take courses at Lakes Region Community College to become a licensed nursing assistant, and once completing that program, she took a job at the Taylor Community in Laconia.

Leclair said the experience taught her importance of empathy and compassion.

“You have to treat everyone with kindness,” she said. “I think a lot of people are quick to judge. You never know what’s going on inside a person’s life.”

Kaitryn Gagnon is also about to embark on a career in the health-care field. She will be attending Clemson University, where she will major in health sciences.

“I’ve always been interested in the health-care profession,” said Gagnon who said that a lot of her family members work in the field.

She hopes to become either a physician’s assistant or physical therapist.

As a student, Gagnon got involved in Students Against Destructive Decisions, which focuses on peer-to-peer education to empower young people to successfully confront the risks and pressures that challenge them in their daily lives.

She was also a three-sport athlete, participating in soccer, ski-racing, and lacrosse. Gagnon, who is from Belmont, has also been involved for years in competitive horseback riding and will be bringing her horse, Guy, an 11-year-old thoroughbred, with her to Clemson where she hopes to be on the university’s equestrian team.

“Sports has been a big influence,” she said. “It’s taught me about the importance of being persistent and determined, and I’ve learned a lot about time management.”

Rebecca Camire, of Canterbury, will be attending the University of New Hampshire where she plans to major in business administration.

“It’s a very applicable major,” she said.

While at BHS she has played soccer and volleyball and has been part of the school’s alpine skiing team. Other activities included the Student Council, French Club, and several honor societies.

The biggest influence for Camire did not come directly from her coursework or school activities, but from the awareness she gained one year while her family hosted an exchange student from Spain.

“It was a life-changing experience,” she said. “It opened me up to the connectedness of the world. It was the best experience of my life.”

Another interesting time during Carmire’s high school years came when she, her older sister and their father, who is a firefighter/EMT, were all taking chemistry courses at the same time.

“If you want something you never stop learning,” she said.

Joseph Spinale, of Belmont, will be going to Cornell University to study civil engineering.

“I’ve been really into math,” Spinale explained. “So I tried to find something where I would use math every day of my life.”

Not surprisingly, Spinale was on the BHS Math Team, and was also involved in the robotics team.

“It was my first dip into actual engineering,” he said.

For athletics, he played on the soccer team and also competed in the shot put on the spring track team.

Spinale knows that adapting to the academic rigors of an Ivy-League school will be a big challenge.

“I won’t be a big fish in a small pond. I’ll be an average fish in a humongous pond,” he said.

Sana Syed will be attending UNH, where she plans to prepare for a career as an occupational therapist.

Syed, who is from Canterbury, said her interest in occupational therapy took off after she observed the work being done at a pediatric therapy facility in Concord called Swing for the Stars.

While at BHS, Syed played soccer and also went out for indoor and outdoor track.

She was also vice president of the Student Council, and was involved in a group called Girl Up, which helped raise money for charity and also put on a program for middle school girls to prepare them for the transition to high school.

To become an occupational therapist, Syed will have to complete four years of studies to get her bachelor’s degree and then study for another 1½ years to earn her master’s degree.

“I see myself as working with kids,” she said. “I want to see I’m making a difference in what I am doing.”

Paige Irving will be going to Suffolk University, where she will be in the arts and sciences honors program. She has also been recruited to play on the university’s golf team.

Irving started playing golf when she was 7 or 8 years old, she said. Her great-grandfather, John Drouin, built the Lakeview Golf Course in Belmont on land that had been part of his dairy farm. Her grandmother was her coach when Irving was in middle school.

Irving, who lives in Belmont, said she enjoyed a wide variety of classes, but it was in high school that she “fell in love with social studies and history.”

One field of work she is considering is mental health counseling.

In addition to golf, Irving also played basketball and softball.

Adam Krasnecki will be going to Clemson University to study automotive engineering. He hopes to get into the field of automotive design.

Krasnecki, who is from Canterbury, grew up working on cars with his father.

“I would like to design (cars) so they don’t break in the first place,” he said.

As part of his requirement for a Diploma of Distinction, Krasnecki had to put on a community outreach presentation about STEM — science, technology, engineering, mathematics — an educational initiative designed to improve competitiveness in science and technology development.

He also played on the basketball and baseball teams and developed a serious interest in astronomy, leading him to join the school’s astronomy club and the New Hampshire Astronomical Society.

As Krasnecki thought about the diversity of courses he has enjoyed during his high school years, along with his career goals and those of his fellow Top 10 classmates, he said, “There are so many paths I could have taken, but I’ve chosen this one.”