By Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
In the hallway of the second floor of the Physical Education Complex lies a story 20 years in the making. Adam and Mary-Kate Feit have known each other since 2005, and their offices are only doors apart from each other. Both professors work in the department of exercise science, with Adam teaching undergraduate classes while Mary-Kate handles graduate student courses.
The two first met back in 2005 when Mary-Kate was pursuing her graduate degree at Springfield College, and Adam was a junior on the football team in the exercise science program. At the time the two only knew each other as coach and athlete. Mary-Kate coached and mentored Adam throughout his junior year and bits of his senior year.
Adam graduated in 2006 and pursued his coaching career. He made multiple stops with graduate positions at Arizona State and The Citadel, a military school in South Carolina.
In 2008, both Adam and Mary-Kate were looking for jobs. Adam ended up at the University of Louisville and Mary-Kate took a position at the University of Iowa. The two kept in contact with each other through the once in favor internet platform known as AOL Instant Messenger. They chatted about finding themselves as coaches, developing their own programs and problems they were having at their Division I universities.
Their relationship would change when the Cedar Rapids river in Iowa flooded for nearly an entire month. The flood forced Mary-Kate to evacuate Iowa, leading to a professional development trip to Louisville. She got to spend time with Adam and the rest of the staff as well as meeting the Olympic Sports strength and conditioning staff at Louisville.
“From being in the right place at the right time, she got a job offer with the Olympic Sports strength and conditioning team,” Adam said. “That’s when I kind of knew we’d been talking for a bit and now she’s here full time, I really gotta get my act together.”
Adam and Mary-Kate started dating in 2008, later marrying in 2011. They have two children, Cody and Macy, and this summer will mark the Feit’s 14-year wedding anniversary. After getting married, Adam and Mary-Kate made their way back to Springfield College to receive their PhDs.
Springfield being home to faculty sweethearts has happened before, but rarely are they ever in the same hallway like the Feits. Knowing that their significant other is close by has been integral to the comfortability of the workplace.
“It’s nice because you know your support system is close by at all times,” Mary-Kate said. “If I need something done and I can’t figure out how to do it, or I need support with something that I’m working on, I know I can go to his office and he can help me with it and vice versa. We say that we work better when we work together whether it’s coaching, doing a certification or teaching. We’re able to really help each other.”
“We actually get more done as a family and understanding each other’s schedule during the day,” Adam said. “We’re in by 8 or 9 o’clock and it gives us opportunities to check up because right after school we’re tag teaming ‘Who’s taking our son, who’s taking our daughter, when’s dinner happening, did we get a babysitter, or what about this event so forth.’ I’d find it very hard to not be able to collaborate if we didn’t have that option, just a couple doors down from each other.”
Despite being mere feet from each other, their paths rarely cross. This semester they’re teaching two different schedules, with Adam in the P.E. Complex on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while Mary-Kate is there on Tuesday and Thursday.
“I like to invite her to faculty lunch on Wednesdays cause it’s only $6 and that starts off strong and then always gets pushed to the side,” Adam said laughing. “Our ability to link up at the same time can be challenging but knowing the door is always open helps. We live by our Google Calendar so if there’s things that we need to do, it has to be scheduled on the calendar and we try to do that throughout the day.”
“Lots of times people joke when they see us together, they’re like ‘Woah both the Feits at the same time.’ Even though we’re working in the same place, it’s kind of rare to have both of us at the same place at the same time,” Mary-Kate said.
Along with teaching, Adam and Mary-Kate also take part in different organizations at Springfield. Adam is the faculty representative for the Pride Cares peer-to-peer mental health support team. Twice each semester the Pride Cares support team runs training to help student athletes know how to support each other. As for Mary-Kate, her focus is working with her graduate students.
“I work directly with the strength and conditioning grad students, so I oversee our varsity weight room downstairs,” Mary-Kate. “That’s something that’s a big part of not only my load as a professor but also my passion.”
Springfield College has been an important part of the Feit’s lives as Alden Street has been the past and present of their relationship. Despite only being at Springfield for graduate school, Mary-Kate sees herself as a Springfield alum first.
“This is where I feel like I found myself, and my people,” Mary-Kate said. “Because of that I found my career. When Adam and I were looking to do our PhD’s, we didn’t apply anywhere else. We knew if we were going to become professors, we wanted to do our PhD’s here and earn our way into positions here.”
Springfield being a second home extends to the rest of the Feit family as well, as Adam and Mary-Kate received their PhDs when their children were three and five years old. If Cody and Macy have a snow day, holiday or their parents have a meeting after-school, then it’s not rare to see them on campus.
“Our kids are so intertwined with our students whether they’re coaches for us or they help coach in the facility outside of campus,” Adam said. “They really get to know the students on a more personal level and that’s everything from how they’re being coached, if they can take them to the dining hall, is there anyone that can play basketball. We really look at our students and the connections we’ve made with our kids as extensions of our family and that’s how we treat them.”
Since the Feits graduated in the late 2000’s, the campus has gone through a lot of changes. The Union was remodeled in 2009 along with a brand new weight room and Field House for the Wellness Complex. Adam gives credit to past and current leadership for strategically planning on the future of Springfield College and that what brought him and Mary-Kate back isn’t what’s on the outside, but on the inside.
“What brought us back is we knew that while things might be changing on the outside, things weren’t changing on the inside,” Adam said. “You talk about humanics and seeing the whole person, spirit, mind and body, but they really anchor down to that mission and that’s what we live by.”
Long-lasting love doesn’t come without its challenges, however being able to work through those challenges and communicate can go a long way.
“It all comes down to communication, making sure that you understand each other’s demands and what’s going on in your lives, which working together really helps with that,” Mary-Kate said. “We understand each other’s lives like scheduling, making sure that the kids and the house are covered but work is also covered. That goes back to that communication but detailed communication can be really important.”
“At the end of the day we’re always trying to make 100 percent,” Adam said. “A team is a sum of its parts. In a partnership you like to think that it’s 50/50 some days but some days, some stages of life and the semester itself it might be 60/40, it might be 70/30 and sometimes it’s 99/1 and we understand that. At the end of the day, we’re always just trying to keep everybody together, including our family and our passion for what we have here at Springfield.”