Good morning and welcome to the 2025 Commencement Exercises at St. Christopher’s School, the 114th Commencement of our storied institution.
 
It is my pleasure to welcome all of you this morning, especially the parents, grandparents, family, and friends of our outstanding Class of 2025.
 
I am grateful to the many hands and hearts who pulled together to make this day possible, particularly Cricket O’Connor in our Development Office and Mark Gentry in our Facilities Office. Will you please join me in thanking the two of them and the many, many others who worked so hard to prepare for this day?
 
 
I also want to recognize our entire faculty and staff, including Extended Day, Lower School, Middle School, and Upper School, plus all staff and administration, for the manner in which you helped to raise these 91 young men set to graduate today. We are indeed a village, a true community here on St. Christopher’s Road, each of us doing our part to shape and mold these young men into the mostly-finished products sitting before us today.  
 
For our Board of Governors, especially our chairman Mr. Tim McCoy, and the president of Church Schools in the Diocese of Virginia, Mr. Henry Broaddus, thank you for your leadership and stewardship of this community and for the unwavering support you have offered to me and to all of our faculty and staff.
 
A special thanks to our Alumni Association President Tripp Taliaferro, whose four-year term as president ends this summer, but not before he helps us welcome 91 new Saints into our alumni brotherhood, bestowing upon them an official St. Christopher’s necktie immediately following receipt of their diploma.
 
I also wish to recognize and thank our colleagues at St. Catherine’s School, especially Head of School Cindy Trask and Interim Head of the Upper School and Associate Head for Academics Frances Doyle. My thanks to you and to your colleagues for your partnership in the education of the Saints in our community.
 
Parents of the Class of 2025: You deserve special recognition this morning. Thank you, first and foremost, for entrusting these young men into our care. It is a sacred trust and one we do not take for granted.
 
 
 
I want to call special attention this morning to our “lifer” families, those who have been with us for 13 or even 14 years—your commitment and loyalty to this school and community is remarkable, and we thank you for that. Seniors and parents, if you joined this community in either Junior Kindergarten or Kindergarten will you please stand and be recognized at this time?
 
For our remaining senior families, approximately half of you, thank you for joining this community either later in Lower School or in Middle or Upper School. Thank you for the gifts and perspective that you brought to this class and this community—we are better for being a collection of dynamic and diverse families from all over the Richmond region—23 zip codes represented in this class alone. Seniors and parents, if you joined St. Christopher’s in First Grade or later, will you please stand and be recognized at this time?
 
Now, to the Class of 2025. Please allow me a few minutes to offer my sincere thanks to all of you.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence. Not just your academic excellence, though you possess that in full form. Thank you, rather, for the breadth and expanse of your excellence, expressed in numerous and varied forms. Allow me to be a bit more specific.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence as Capstone Scholars. Six of you, more seniors than ever before, pursued high-level intellectual exploration on topics as varied as solar panel sales efficacy, number theory, and the role of Artificial Intelligence in the 2024 presidential election.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence in achievement on Advanced Placement courses. 97% of you took at least one AP course in the Upper School, and just over 40% of you were recognized as AP scholars in your junior year, approximately twice the national average.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence, leadership, and service in Chapel this year. Sixteen of you—more, we think, than in any previous senior class—gave Chapel talks this year, inspiring our entire community. Importantly, your leadership and service extended well beyond the walls of our Chapel and out into the broader community. Collectively, you have performed over 6,000 hours of community service during your four years in the Upper School, equating to nearly 70 hours per student on average, well beyond our 50-hour graduation requirement. Incredibly, one of you has logged 230 hours, another 330 hours, and one of you an incredible 448 hours.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence in artistic expression and creativity. You helped us sell out the Love Jennison Family Theater at St. Catherine’s for four consecutive “Sound of Music” performances this fall—a first in that beautiful new facility. Approximately 10% of you plan to continue with performing arts in some form in college, and one of you, for the first time in 30 years, earned a “Silver Six Arts Award” by showcasing your talent in the three performing arts disciplines of music, theater, and dance. And, turning back the clock to your 5th grade year, you guys crushed it in “A Year With Frog and Toad” in the 2018 Lower School Musical.
 
Thank you, gentlemen, for your excellence—and, truly, dominance may be a better word here—in the athletic arena. You all have made history by helping St. Christopher’s win, for a record 9th consecutive year, the Prep League Director’s Cup, bestowed upon the League school with the greatest overall success across 12 league sports. Just to eliminate any doubt or suspense in the matter, your teams won the Prep League in a remarkable 8 out of 12 sports. You ran away with the Director’s Cup this year.
 I am pleased to say that it is not only my very biased opinion that thinks so highly of you, both individually and collectively. As a group, you earned 387 acceptances to 122 colleges and universities across 35 states, the District of Columbia, and seven different countries. That works out to just over four acceptances per senior. So, to any parents out there who may be staring down the college admission process in the next year or few—and I am talking to myself here—know that St. Christopher’s seniors benefit from the gift of choice. Yes, the college admissions process is highly competitive, and yes, it is different from when we all did it 30+ years ago, but at the end of the day, colleges and universities across the U.S. and the world recognize excellence when they see it, and they obviously saw it in the stellar Class of 2025.
 
And yet, gentlemen, in the years to come, when I look at your composite photos, which we will hang in the Ryan Dining Hall for the next four years, while you are away in college, I won’t think about the sheer excellence of your academic firepower, your artistic expression, your athletic prowess, or your success in college admissions.
 
In fact, I won’t think about your excellence at all.
 
Instead, I will think about your goodness. I will recall, for example, that 85% of you reported growing closer to classmates you did not know as well during your overnight retreat at Camp River’s Bend this spring.
 
I will picture you playing, with pure joy and absent any pretense, with your Kindergarten buddies, whom you mentored and cared for on numerous occasions over the past 10 months. I will think about those sold-out shows in Sound of Music, but I will recall the feeling of warmth and excitement that you generated in that theater.
 
I won’t remember the scores and outcomes of your many athletic contests, but I will remember the energy, excitement, and sense of community that you all generated in many a packed Scott Gym, in Friday Night Lights versus Collegiate, or just eight days ago on Jacobs Field, when several seniors led the way to a walk-off finish and secure a spot in the final four of the state baseball tournament.
 
And while I may not remember all the details of that epic game or others like it, I will remember seeing about a dozen of your classmates at that baseball game, hanging on every play, jumping and screaming in jubilation, joyful over what their classmates had accomplished.
 
You see, when community and brotherhood are done right, when there is true goodness paired with excellence, the lines begin to blur over exactly who accomplishes what and who feels which emotion as a result of those accomplishments. Instead, there is a shared sense of camaraderie, an unmitigated joy that is known to those of us fortunate to be part of a community like St. Christopher’s. It did not matter if you were a spectator or player in that baseball game last week, or if you were an actor or audience member in Endeavour Hall this fall, or a senior or a Kindergartener during your visits throughout this school year—we all experienced the joy, the excellence, the goodness of each of you. And for that, we will always be grateful. To the Class of 2025, God Bless you all, and thank you.