The Impact Report

By God’s grace, this year was also marked by an extraordinary milestone: three of our seniors—Parker Johnson, Robert McPhie, and Durham Pelinka—were accepted to Harvard University.

Pacifica alumni, Ryan Martin (University of Washington ’26) and Houston Mallette (University of Alabama ’21) represent the kind of excellence Pacifica seeks to cultivate—student-athletes who have gone on to think and live well at the highest levels while remaining grounded in the values and relationships that shaped them.

In knowing God, we discover what it means to become more truly human, the way God intended us to be. To be human is not as complex as we often make it. Being human means confronting the sin that so easily entangles us and discovering our desperate need for Christ. 

Step into the Triton Lab and you see it immediately. Athletes are growing in real time—moving faster, jumping higher, pushing and pulling more weight. All of that’s good. But if that’s all we see, we miss the more important formation project underway.

At Pacifica, the arts are not “extras.” They are foundational to rallying the really human things: awakening wonder, forming imagination, and training students to offer and contemplate beauty in community.

Currently, three Pacifica alumni reside in the Washington, D.C., area, using their gifts and talents to contribute meaningfully to our country’s civic life during its 250th year.

In the Western canon, few phrases resonate as deeply as the opening lines of Augustine’s Confessions: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.” Written as far back as 397 A.D., Augustine’s words remain in our spiritual lexicon because they capture the human condition.

On a foggy January morning, a literature class sits silent and still silent and still, eyes fixed on the front of the room. Before them, Mr. Dobbins recites a section from the lyrical legend, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.