Being a Scholar Athlete Gave Me the Confidence to Succeed

Phillip Springsteen, ’20, always knew he wanted to be an engineer. “As a child, I was always tearing stuff apart and trying to make new things out of it,” he shared. “It didn’t always work out the best, as far as my parents said. A lot of times, things would end up kind of broken. But eventually, I started creating some pretty interesting stuff.”

So when it was time for him to go to college, no one was surprised he was looking for a school with an engineering program. Springsteen was also planning to wrestle in college,
as the sport had always been a large part of his life. “I wanted to make sure that I found a school where there was an engineering program and I could wrestle. I knew that if I went to a school with one or the other, I wouldn’t be quite as happy,” he said.

The University of Mary turned out to be the perfect fit. Head wrestling coach Adam Aho had seen Springsteen at a wrestling tournament and was impressed, so when Springsteen applied to Mary at the encouragement of his high school coach, Aho invited him to join the team.

“I really liked Coach Aho’s mentality,” Springsteen said. “And after speaking with Dr. Pilling (dean of the Hamm School of Engineering) about his plans for the engineering program, the University of Mary as a whole felt like a really good fit for me. And now, six years later, it really worked out.”

Now, Springsteen lives in Tuscon, AZ, where he is a software engineer at Raytheon Technologies Corporation.

Springsteen says the real-life experience he gained as a student at Mary, which included three internships, helped him secure this dream job.

Springsteen’s time as a scholar-athlete at Mary has equally impacted his life. “It gave me confidence. When I feel like I can’t do something, like when I’m faced with a task at work that I have no idea even how to begin, wrestling gave me the determination and the confidence to really push myself and try to develop a plan, execute it, and just keep going.”

Some of Springsteen’s best memories from his time at Mary are working on interdisciplinary projects in his engineering classes and competing in the national tournament for wrestling. He placed seventh at nationals his redshirt sophomore year and was second seed going into the national tournament his redshirt junior year, when the tournament got cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was named an All-American for that year.