Written by Michael Trecker
Photos by Kelsey Thompson

Sponsored by East Village Place

Published in Longmeadow Neighbors (June 2022)

Everybody knows what it is like to relocate. Most people have moved homes at some point in their lives, often multiple times. Whether it was growing up, moving to a different town, moving out of your parent's house for the first time, relocating for work, or buying a new house with a significant other, moving somewhere new can be nerve-wracking. Moving during the Covid-19 pandemic presented even more complications. Moving to a new place and being surrounded by all new people can be overwhelming, but moving to a new place and being totally isolated from your new neighbors can be equally as stressful. Thankfully, Kelsey and Paul Thompson, along with their two children, were able to make the most out of their situation when they moved to Longmeadow in June 2022, during the height of the lockdown.

You see, Paul Thompson is a professional hockey player currently for the Bridgeport Islanders. Growing up in New Hampshire, he played football and baseball as well as his now vocation in high school, but started taking hockey more seriously during his junior and senior years. “It was just always fun. I never really thought I was going to make a living out of it. I was good at the high school level and then I moved on to juniors and I just kept excelling. I went to college and thought ‘I’ll get a degree and be able to play,’ then I had a good junior and senior year of college. The idea of playing pro became more realistic,” Paul said. He played four years of college hockey at the University of New Hampshire, where he also studied health management and policy. Right after college, he signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins and played in their minor league system. When he was with the Penguins, one of his teammates was Colin McDonald, who happens to be the brother of Kelsey Thompson. They first met at a bar when Kelsey was going down to visit her brother in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania for New Years. That was 10 years ago.

They moved around a lot for Paul’s career, living in a litany of different cities: Albany, New York, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida to name a few. They are happy to finally have somewhere to lay down roots. “When we were younger and we didn’t have kids it was easy. It’s fun to go around seeing different places, and renting an apartment is a lot easier. As our kids got a little older, we wanted to have a home base. Just having a place we can call home and being part of the community and having friends here has certainly been a nice change of place,” Paul said. “The previous eight years, not knowing where we were going to be every July, and having to find a place for the summer for four months, it’s fun, but knowing where you are going to be is definitely a lot nicer.” The Thompson family has settled in nicely here, and something that helped a lot was that Kelsey was already a realtor in town before they moved to Longmeadow.

Being a realtor was not the career path that Kelsey had in mind her whole life, though. She grew up in Connecticut and went to Quinnipiac University where she received her degree in public relations, which, though she did not know it then, would end up synergizing well with her current vocation. In a roundabout way, Kelsey only actually ended up becoming interested in real estate because of her husband’s career. They had to move right after buying a house together, which indirectly caused the dominos to fall for Kelsey and real estate.

“We have moved around quite a bit during his hockey career. We lived in numerous different cities across the country, and we bought a house in Albany, New York when Paul was playing for the Albany Devils, which is the minor league affiliate of the New Jersey Devils,” Kelsey said. “Right after we got that house, he was traded to Springfield, so we were like, ‘Oh no, we just bought a house, what are we going to do with this house?’ We decided we were going to hold onto it and rent it.” Kelsey found some college-aged girls who were interested in renting the house, and she put together a lease. One of the girls’ mothers ended up being a real estate agent, and she called Kelsey to talk about the lease. Soon afterward, Kelsey saw an advertisement for a course at Keller Williams Real Estate to get your real estate license. “I just thought, ‘I’m just going to go take the course, because if we are going to be landlords I want to know what I am and am not supposed to be doing.’ So I took the course and I loved it, and I got my license and just dove right in,” Kelsey said.

She is now in her fourth year as a real estate agent with Keller Williams, where she runs a small team. “When I started at the beginning, the kids at the time were three and two years old. I was a stay at home mom, so I thought this would kind of be like a little side hobby for me to show houses on the weekends and just have some fun with it. It quickly transformed into a full blown career.” This ended up working out extremely well for the Thompson family, because in 2020, Phil’s hockey season, like most sports at the time, was shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Real estate at that time was really taking off, both as a market and for me personally, so the roles kind of reversed at that point,” Kelsey said. Although she has worked in Longmeadow as a realtor for four years, Kelsey and Paul lived in Enfield for their first couple of years in the area when Paul was playing in Springfield. “We would always do a lot of things like bring our kids to the parks in Longmeadow. We would see kids riding their bikes to school, and we would go out to dinner a lot here,” Paul said. As Kelsey’s business started to take off when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it began to make more sense for the Thompsons to move to Longmeadow. With Paul’s family being from New Hampshire and Kelsey’s living near Hartford, Longmeadow provided an area that already worked well with both of their jobs, as well as being relatively equidistant between their families. “It just made sense to make Longmeadow our home base,” Paul said. “We think it’s a great place to raise our kids. The sense of community is kind of like an old school New England town that you don’t really see too often anymore. It was a pretty easy decision for us once our kids got to school age to move into town and move them into the schools here.”

Initially moving to Longmeadow in the middle of the pandemic was different than moving anywhere else for them. “It was a little odd, because we couldn’t really meet neighbors for like a year, and the kids weren’t physically in school, but just from her business we had a good amount of friends in surrounding towns and we made the most of it,” Paul said. As the pandemic has relaxed its grip, the couple have made those important connections with their neighbors, and they love the area that they live in within the town. “We live in a neighborhood that calls itself ‘Circle Park Neighborhood’ because there is a huge circular green in the center of the neighborhood. We have a private facebook group that will do fun things like an easter egg hunt for the kids in the neighborhood,” Kelsey said. “We are very very happy with where we ended up.” Both of their kids, aged seven and five, are involved in town sports programs, which is helping them get back outside in the aftermath of the lockdown. They are members at Twin Hills Country Club where Paul likes to golf in the off-season for hockey. Kelsey also joined the LEEF board this year, which raises money to give back to the public schools in Longmeadow. Paul has been trying to teach both of their kids how to golf at Twin hills, to varying degrees of success. “I find it very ironic that I am living here and settled and raising a family. When my brother went pro, his first team was the Springfield Falcons. I was a senior in high school and my parents used to take me to his games when he played at home in Springfield. We could get off at the Longmeadow exit and drive on the main road in Longmeadow. My parents and I used to be in awe of this beautiful town, and I used to just love driving through it. Looking back, it is funny how things just came full circle,” Kelsey said. “I just think that the community has treated us very well, and we are very happy to call Longmeadow home. Of all the opportunities and places we could have settled, there is a reason that we wanted to settle here.”