We-Ha–West Hartford Magazine’s seventh annual ‘Terrific Teens’ spotlights local teens who are making a difference in the community – and for this year’s photo shoot we headed to Westfarms.

By Aaron Green, photos by Todd Fairchild

Even though this is West Hartford Magazine’s seventh annual feature on local teens in West Hartford, the task of choosing the young adults to interview hasn’t gotten any easier.

Our goal has always been to find the kids who capture attention not just because they earned the best grades, or the most points in a game, but because they are all around good kids. As you can imagine, there is no short supply of eligible students.

This year features 2017 graduates who hail from Conard, Hall, Kingswood Oxford, and Northwest Catholic. Our tradition is to pick one male and one female from each school – but the male from Hall has a twin brother, so we had to be inclusive!

Why Westfarms? We strive to seek unique areas of town that maybe have history, or significance to the families. Since Westfarms has been a part of our collective history for over 40 years, it provided an interesting back drop for our photo shoot this year.

Here’s our male terrific teen pick from Kingswood Oxford.

Nick Ravalese – “Future Engineer”

Nick Ravalese is a 2017 Kingswood Oxford graduate,  now a student at Northeastern University in Boston, MA. Although he has declared a major in engineering, he’s not sure what aspect of engineering will be his ultimate focus.

Nick was an athlete in high school and said it was an experience that profoundly shaped him. “Playing sports was one of my favorite things to do in high school,” he said. His hobbies include the various sports he played throughout high school for the school team – basketball and soccer – or weightlifting and training which he said “helped me get stronger.” Nick not only likes to play soccer and basketball, but he enjoys watching the professionals in action. Cooking is also a hobby, he said.

Nick was a high achiever academically in high school, earning the AP Scholar distinction. He was also on the executive committee of KO’s tour guide association.

His favorite quote is by Manchester United forward and Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic: “Some things are made by destiny, yes, other things by hard work, but quality you don’t learn. Quality you are born with.”

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