MANCHESTER – If you’ve been to a Bow High football game in the last four years, you may have heard some shouts from the sideline and wondered how you stumbled into the Hundred Acre Wood.
Cries of “Pooh Bear!” have been common at Bow. It wasn’t a play call or an A.A. Milne fascination. It was the nickname of Christopher Robbins (how could it not be?), who had his name called often.
Robbins saw some varsity action on both sides of the ball as a freshman. He was a three-year starter at outside linebacker, first getting the nod as a sophomore in 2013 when Bow went 9-1 and won the Division III title. He also ran for over 500 yards as a sophomore and again as a junior, and last year he rushed for 1,204 yards as a senior. On Saturday he’ll put on the Bow helmet one more time as he plays for Team West in the CHaD NH East-West High School All-Star football game.
“He showed promise early and he certainly had the framework – big size, lots of drive and ambition – and he was very excited to dress for varsity as a freshman. Sometimes when you dress freshmen they’re kind of ambivalent, but he was not. He was ready to go,” Bow Coach Paul Cohen said. “He played a little bit here and there and obviously we saw the markings of what could be a really good career ahead of him at a very young age.”
That promise quickly turned to production in 2013 when Robbins was a key cog in a defense that allowed 8.4 points per game, posted five shutouts and dominated all the way to a 20-6 win against Stevens in the D-III final.
“It’s crazy looking back at that season. It’s unreal how much talent we had on that team,” Robbins said. “It was awesome to be part of that.”
Much of that talent was on the offensive line, which paved the way for Robbins to run for 522 yards on 102 carries.
He put up almost identical numbers the next year – 586 yards on 106 carries – and the Falcons rolled to an 8-0 regular season before getting upset in the D-III semifinals. Robbins (6-foot-2, 205 pounds) became the feature back last fall as he piled up those 1,204 yards and led Bow to an 8-2 mark and its third straight trip to the semifinals.
“The past two years he’s really been a hard-driving, juggernaut kind of runner, and if we needed that extra three yards, or whatever it happened to be, he could get it for us,” Cohen said. “His speed improved tremendously over the course of his career from running track, as well, so that was one of the things that, to me, really stood out – how fast he was when he would get into the open field.
“I think about my time at Bow (15 year) and we’ve had a lot of relatively smaller kids that were very, very speedy, but they didn’t have the mass to run people over. And we’ve had some bulldozing type backs, but generally they weren’t all that fast. But he possessed both qualities, which is really very impressive.”
But Robbins had to get a little sneaky to get into the backfiled at Bow. He was a lineman for the first four years he played football and in eighth grade he was moved to tight end. That’s where the high school coaches wanted to put him when he arrived as a freshman, but Robbins had other ideas.
“Our coach told me to go over with the tight ends and linemen during practice, but I kind of just stuck with the running backs,” Robbins said. “And then I started running well, so he allowed it.”
Robbins may have stood out more as a running back playing for the Falcons – rushing for over 1,000 yards will do that – but he’ll be playing defense on Saturday and in the fall at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass. Which is just fine by him.
“I prefer playing where ever I can hit someone,” Robbins said with a malevolent grin that never crossed the face of the real Pooh Bear.
He’ll be playing rover in college, a hybrid defensive back/linebacker position that will utilize his diverse skill set. And that’s exactly what he’ll be playing for Team West and Coach Paul Lavigne on Saturday at St. Anselm College.
“I’ve been impressed with him this week during practice,” Lavigne said. “He’s really a smart kid, he’s trying hard, he’s very eager, he’s got his eyes right on the football field and he knows what he wants to do.”
One of the things Robbins hopes to do on Saturday is show that a player from a D-III school like Bow can compete with the top players from the D-I programs.
“Last year when (former Bow teammate) Matt (Ehrenberg) played in the CHaD game, he was pretty much the only D-III player and everyone was just like, ‘Oh, he’s just D-III, he’s not that good,’” Robbins said. “So I feel like I have something to prove to the guys.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20.)