The 2023 graduation class of a Massachusetts high school will have you seeing double as it contains 15 pairs of twins and one set of triplets.
Westford Academy celebrated the special occasion with its 420 graduating students in a ceremony on Saturday.
But no one realized just how special the class was until it was time to put the yearbook together and they needed to dedicate two pages to the twins and triplets club.
Principal Jim Antonelli joked the remarkable feat is down to the ‘good water in Westford’.
The twins and triplets are said to have enjoyed a great time growing up together at the high school and regularly played sports with each other.
The 2023 graduation class of a Massachusetts high school will have you seeing double as it contains 15 pairs of twins and one set of triplets
Westford Academy needed two pages to dedicate to the twins and triplets club and Principal Jim Antonelli joked the remarkable feat is down to the ‘good water in Westford’
The school celebrated the special occasion with its 420 graduating students in a ceremony on Saturday
The sets include Aidan and Meghan Hall, Chase and Nick Yang, Owen and Kaitlyn Walpole, Leah and Ben Solari, Megan and Sarah Strzegowksi, Lia and Alan Kemeny and Lizi and Levi Ryll.
While Charles and Andrew Lin, Hemu and Him Vadlamani, Catherine and William Crane, Mahav and Keshav Jhawar, Lindsay and Olivia Ely, Brendan and Keegan Connell, Graham and Emerson Stair and Jaden and Jared Xiao make up the rest of the 15 twins.
And Ben, Justin and Alex Jones are the only triplets in the graduating class.
All of them will be moving on to higher education along with 98 per cent of the rest of the students.
Around 114,000 twins were born in America out of 3.66 million births in 2021, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which accounts for around three per cent.
And there were 2,785 triplets born in the same year, making up 0.07 per cent of births.
But the twins and triplets in Westford Academy’s graduating class of 2023 make up almost eight per cent of the students.
It is not known how many, if any, were conceived through in vitro fertilization where there is a higher chance of multiple births.
‘It’s good water in Westford, I’ll tell you that much,’ Principal Antonelli said.
‘Got to give a plug to my water department. They’re good people.
‘I think the real impact moment was taking a look at that page in print, in the yearbook, was that final moment for me of “wow, wow”.
‘Five years from now when they come back for their reunion. It’s gonna be amazing.
‘This particular class, it will really click with, “what’s happening with the twins.”‘
The twins and triplets are said to have enjoyed a great time growing up together at the high school and regularly played sports with each other
Twins made up three per cent of the 3.66 million births in the US last year while triplets accounted for 0.07 per cent but they made up almost eight per cent of Westford Academy’s graduating class of 2023
‘I think we always knew it was a big class, we have a lot of twins here,’ one twin said.
Meghan insisted being a twin has its positives and told local Boston television station WHDH: ‘We know how to share because we grew up together.
‘We know how to make friends because we made them together.’
But another twin said his sister follows him everywhere. ‘I can’t get rid of her,’ he said before she replied: ‘No I don’t!’
The triplets enjoy being one up on everyone else. Ben said: ‘It’s nice strength in numbers.’
Teachers often get confused about who they spot in the hallway amongst the 33 siblings.
Dan Twomey, dean of students for the graduating class, said: ‘When the yearbook was going into production at the beginning of the school year, it was like, “Wow! I guess we really do have that many”.
‘They hang out together. They play sports together. They do activities together, and they’re all graduating together.’
The number of twins in next year’s graduating class will return to more ordinary numbers with just six.
