When Ben Robbins opened the door to Reed Hall room 402, he expected to see the room where he would begin his college career. Instead, he found a piece of his mother’s past.
“I swear this was my room,” repeated Jen Libby, Ben’s mother, throughout the move-in process. Despite Ben’s doubts, Libby had lived there during her junior year back during her time as an undergraduate at Springfield College from 1989 to 1993.
Robbins moved into Springfield College just over two weeks ago on September 4 to prepare for new student orientation, a three-day event that allows freshman and transfer students to meet their peers and experience campus prior to the start of the semester. But before he could settle into his new home, his mother recognized it as the space she once called her own.
It was an emotional return to Alden Street for Libby, as she was astounded to be retracing her steps through the residence hall 33 years later.
“[At] dorm drop off, you get separated from your child while you go park the car,” said Libby. “So now I’m walking back to Reed and I’m alone, and I just instinctively go left. And as I’m climbing the stairs, I’m like, this is so strange. Flashbacks coming at me as I’m climbing the stairs. And then I get up to the top of the stairs and I see 401 and I’m like, ‘no way.’ And I start to realize, and I go through those doors and I’m standing in my old dorm room looking out the window. I can’t even believe this. Like the rush of emotion was so overwhelming, and all these memories, like a Rolodex, start coming back through my brain.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
That phrase is plastered all over trinkets and woven into society. Tattoos, coffee mugs, bumper stickers. Some use it as a motif, a comfort that everything will work out. Others are more logic-oriented, feeling that they are in full control of what happens and the outcomes of their life.
But for Robbins, who considers himself to be more of the latter, the signs are becoming increasingly harder to ignore.
“I visited campus three times,” recalled Robbins.
After a brief football recruitment visit with Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts, Robbins and his family took a drive down Alden street and got a look at the campus buzzing with students. A street that held almost as much significance as his freshman year dorm room.
Robbins has a twin brother named Alden. Although already a family name, Libby admits Alden Street on campus played a role in the name of her son.
But the seemingly invisible family ties pulled Robbins back for the open house event and that was where Robbins knew he wanted to continue his academic career at Springfield College.
“Then I came to the open house and I was like ‘Alright, this is perfect for me.’”
But before Springfield became a place of family connections and incredible coincidences, Alden Street was just a place where Robbins would begin the next chapter of his life, and with its focus on athletics and history with the YMCA program, it stood out as a strong destination for his interests.
As a high school athlete, Robbins knew he wanted to pursue a career around the world of sports, he just was unsure of the exact direction.
“At first, I was thinking about doing sports psychology,” said Robbins, “I was really into the mental game of sports, [but] then, my senior year I led my team in technical fouls, so I figured I probably wouldn’t be a very good sports psychologist.”
But that is when a football state championship led to a feature in an edition of Sports Illustrated and Robbins found a new passion for sports journalism.
“[In] my junior year, we got a new coach,” recalled Robbins. “[We] had like 50 guys in the program, went undefeated, and won the state championship, [and] we were featured on Sports Illustrated, and I was like ‘That’s a really cool story. I want to be involved with things like that. I want to cover things like that.’”
With his decision finalized, Robbins was ready to begin his college journey and have some independence.
“I love my mom, but I was kicking the door down to get out,” Robbins joked. “I like time where I don’t get talked to at all. I love talking to people, that’s great, but sometimes I just want to come home and just be alone, she’s a very talkative person.”
But in search of some quiet space, he found a room that kept him connected to his family, even across the border of his now shared home states, Massachusetts and Maine.
Robbins considers himself a logic based thinker, but even he recognizes that the family connections have led him to the right place.
“My mom says a lot of things,” said Robbins, “And I hate it when she’s right. But she [said] ‘There’s something about Springfield you won’t know it until you’re on campus.’ And now I’m like, ‘All right, like there really is.’”
Libby knew it from the second Ben started thinking about his next academic step, he was meant for Springfield.
“Yeah, ever since Ben started talking about college, I had hoped that he would find Springfield as contagious as I did,” Libby said. “Springfield just gives you that meaning and purpose and drive plus direction. And, you know, I still find that energy on campus to be electric and there’s no place else quite like it. So as he was going through the process, he just kept returning to Springfield, no matter what else was out there. He just knew, you know, stepping onto campus. He just knew it was the place.”
Robbins has found his home here at Springfield College, and between his twin brother sharing the same name as the College’s main street and living in his mother’s old dorm room, the distance between his new home and his old one suddenly feels a little smaller.