It started with a sprained ankle.

Robyn Adams graduated from Herrin High School in 1993, a multi-sport athlete on a softball team that made it all the way to the state finals that year, finishing second. A fifth-grade teacher had first planted the idea of teaching in her head. Then, during basketball season, she hurt her ankle — and that injury changed the trajectory.

Legendary Herrin coach Bruce Jilek drove her to Marion Memorial Hospital and connected her with physical therapist Jay Pardus, a respected figure in rehabilitation throughout Southern Illinois. What stuck with Robyn wasn't just the treatment. It was the education.

"It kind of fit the bill for both things," she said. Teaching and athletics, helping people get better — it was all in one place.

After graduation, she attended Rend Lake College on a softball scholarship, earning an Associate of Science degree. From there, she enrolled in SIU's Physical Therapist Assistant program. The plan was straightforward until her clinical rotations revealed something about herself: she wanted more responsibility, more say in patient care.

"I kind of like to be in charge and have a little bit more say in what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis," she said.

The problem was credential limbo. Four years of college, two associate degrees, no bachelor's — PT programs couldn't place her. Too many credits for a freshman entry, not enough for a master's program. So she stayed at SIU, earned a bachelor's in education with an athletic training specialization, and opened the door she needed.

In 1999, she enrolled in the physical therapy program at Washington University in St. Louis. It was a significant leap — academically, geographically, and culturally.

While living in St. Louis as a graduate student, she covered athletic events at public schools through a healthcare company. At Vashon High School, staff warned her that her scissors and athletic training tools could be used as weapons against her. One evening, a drive-by shooting two blocks away ended with police escorting her and the opposing team to their vehicles.

She was not a city person.

She earned her Master of Science in Physical Therapy in December 2001 and came straight home to Southern Illinois, joining Southern Illinois Healthcare. She's been there for twenty-five years.

She also kept going back to school. After fifteen years of practice, she returned to complete what she'd walked away from in 2001 — when WashU transitioned to a doctorate program just as she graduated, and she'd been too exhausted to stay another year. In 2016, she earned her DPT.

Today, she manages SIH's outpatient rehabilitation operations at two locations — Herrin and West Frankfort. The Herrin facility, which sits in the former Anderson Furniture building on Route 148, handles up to twenty-four or twenty-five clinicians on any given day, with a focus on pediatrics, sports medicine, and industrial/worker’s comp pupulations.

And then there's the full-circle moment she still talks about.

Jay Pardus — the physical therapist who first educated a teenage softball player about how to rehab her ankle — eventually became someone who reported to Robyn. "It kind of comes full circle," she said. He retired last year at age eighty-two.

The ripple effect has reached her family, too. Her sister Johna, a Herrin class of 1990 graduate, appeared in a prior issue of this magazine. Johna's two daughters — Robyn's nieces — have both gone into physical therapy.

One of Robyn's strongest beliefs is about job shadowing. Too many students commit to a career without ever seeing what it actually looks like on a Tuesday afternoon. She welcomes students who want to observe, answers questions at career fairs, and makes time for anyone genuinely considering the field.

"You don't know until you actually get out there and see what the day-to-day looks like," she said. It's what Jay Pardus did for her.

She still lives in the house she grew up in — she bought it from her parents and never really left. She waves at neighbors from the yard. She runs into former classmates at Kroger and ends up talking in the parking lot.

The sprained ankle led to a PT, a career, a doctorate, a manager's role, a sister's daughters, and a full-circle moment with an eighty-two-year-old man.

In Herrin, apparently, the long way around is usually the right way.