The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale lacrosse star a true student-athlete
NEW HAVEN — Bob and Karen Reeves refer to it simply as “the phone call.”
Even now, five years later, as they stood there on Yale Senior Day hugging the youngest of their four boys before he scored four goals in the 16-8 rout of Harvard, they still seemed in awe of the call’s power.
“That phone call literally changed Ben’s life,” Bob Reeves said.
Ben Reeves was a good student at Palmyra-Macedon High in Upstate New York, not a great one. Reeves scored goals and set up others in extraordinary numbers, second most points in New York history. Yet beyond an initial commitment to Hobart and some interest from Binghamton and Boston University, the traditional lacrosse powers remained strangers to the small town between Syracuse and Rochester.
That’s when Andy Shay called.
Shay had seen Reeves at an Under Armour event. Hobart was going through a coaching change. The Yale coach was looking for a left-handed attackman.
“When Ben got the phone call, he’s like, ‘I want to go to Yale’ ” Karen said. “I’m like, ‘Seriously, Ben? I don’t think this is going to work for you.’ He goes, ‘I’m going to do it.’
“He had to the take ACTs again. He spent hours and hours studying. Once he got here to Yale, he has taken advantage of his opportunities.”
Bob nodded in agreement.
“Really taken advantage of his opportunities,” he said.
The term student-athlete can turn our faces ashen. So many athletes at the highest levels of college sports treat academics with such dawdling interest, even disdain, that it can be hypocritical to use the phrase. And then a young guy like Ben Reeves comes along and you’re embarrassed not to rush “studentathlete” into print.
Reeves is the No. 1 player on the No. 1 lacrosse team in the nation. An outstanding student, he will graduate in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. He will be a doctor one day. This is a young man who, according to Inside Lacrosse Magazine, once called his high school coach Joe Hill and told him he wanted to cure cancer.
On this Saturday, Reeves would settle for scoring seven points, beating Harvard at Reese Stadium and helping Yale complete its first undefeated league season since 1956. A fact Reeves didn’t know until Shay told the team after the game.
“It was probably by design,” Reeves said. “He didn’t want to blow it up.”
With 279 career points he is the all-time Yale scorer. He is only eight shy of Jon Reese’s record of 150 goals. With 42 goals and 78 points in 14 games this spring, he’s third in the nation in goals and sixth in scoring. He is the only two-time Tewaarton Award finalist playing, with the 2018 finalists to be announced on May 10. He’s a two-time All-American and reigning Ivy League MVP.
The Ivy League tournament is coming up, followed by an NCAA Tournament game at home. Best of all, Reeves is in position to make a push for the school’s first national lacrosse championship Memorial Day weekend at Gillette Stadium.
“We set some long-term goals at the beginning of the season,” he said. “But right now it’s about getting better in the next practice.”
Mom doesn’t take the hype bait either.
“One day at a time,” Karen said. “Otherwise I get too nervous and over think things.”
You come across a young person like Ben Reeves. You wonder. Is he genetically destined? Is his work ethic so extraordinary? Where does he come from? How does he happen?
Growing up in England, Karen always wanted to come to the States. Being a nanny was the best way to make it happen. Graduated from Oswego State and unable yet to find a job in his field, Bob was driving across country with a buddy whose family had moved to Utah.
Karen and Bob met in Utah in April. She returned to England in July. He went to England in August to visit her. They were married there in September.
“It was wild romance,” Karen said.
“We did it the wrong way,” Bob said. “We knew each other for five months. We had no money. We had no jobs. We were in love.”
Worked out great. Isn’t love grand?
Bob, a quality engineer with SPX Flow in Rochester, and Karen, a nurse for University of Rochester Home Care, would raise four sons. The first three played college soccer.
Jeremy, who played at SUNY Geneseo, got his doctorate and is a physicist. Jon, a doctoral candidate in physical anthropology at George Washington, played at SUNY Potsdam. Mark, played at RIT, graduated last year and has moved to Milford as a packaging engineer.
“All we taught them was try to chase your dreams best you can,” Bob said. And Ben?
“We gave him a house (to grow up),” Bob said. “Drove him around.”
“Took him to tournaments,” Karen said.
“He has done the rest,” Bob said.
Mom and dad are modest and as understated as their son’s lacrosse game.
“Once Ben decided he was going to attend Yale, he jumped in head first,” Bob said. “To have success at this level, I think you’ve got to have to not only have the desire, but the right fit. Yale couldn’t have been a better fit.”
Karen lets her mind drift and she sees something beautiful.
“Ben was a little baby in his dad’s arms, Bob would be there hurling balls to his older brothers,” Karen said. “Ben has been focused on lacrosse since the age of four. He’d shovel our backyard devoid of snow. He’d be out there practicing for hours and hours. So in a way, this doesn’t surprise me.”
“He was so driven,” Bob said. “I think his stick was his girlfriend and his best friend for about 15 years.”
Still, Bob remembers thinking the lack of flash in his game would cause his son to be overlooked. He told Ben to be prepared to sit on the bench for a few years at Yale.
“He is unselfish,” Bob said. “He is understated.”
His vision, his nuanced game, is embraced and celebrated now. Does he find motivation in once being overlooked?
“Not really,” Ben said. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else but Yale.”
Knowing his medical future, Dallas took Reeves fourth in the Major League Lacrosse Draft in midApril.
“I’m going to play for one or two years,” he said. “Do some research before applying to medical school, most likely here at Yale or (Hospital for Special Surgery) in New York.”
Reeves has worked summers at the University of Rochester, studying tumors. He spent time at Yale doing lab research on leukemia and later at the cardiac catheterization lab at Yale New Haven Hospital. Once looking at cancer research, cardiology and neurology fascinate him. The kid shoveling snow to practice? He has become one of our nation’s great student-athletes.
“I can’t stop thinking how quickly time has passed,” Bob Reeves said. “The phone call, it changed his life. Amazing.”