Three’s not a crowd for Crews triplets at UWA

Students Jadyn Crews, Trace Crews and Makenna Crews are in their first semesters at UWA.

Gordo High School graduates have brought their family togetherness to Livingston

Story: Phillip Tutor | Photo: Betsy Compton

As his sisters traded catty one-liners meant to get under his skin, Trace Crews glanced their way, to his left and his right, and chuckled as if it were no big deal. He’d heard their spiels before.

“We’re very boring,” he said. “I don’t know what’s so intriguing about us.”

Which isn’t altogether true. Trace does know why so many people at the University of West Alabama are interested in his sisters, Makenna Crews and Jadyn Crews, and him.

They’re triplets.

“I know you don’t see triplets every day, but other than that, I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t get what the big deal is.”

The big deal isn’t triplet rarity. Instead, it’s that the connective tissue that binds these first-year UWA students is as persistent in Livingston as it was in Pickens County, where they graduated from Gordo High School. Trace, Makenna and Jadyn are as much a collective as they are individuals. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Crews triplets live in Gilbert Hall.

Makenna shares a dormitory room with Jadyn.

“I didn’t want to live with a random person,” Jadyn said.

Trace lives across the hall. His roommate is Collin Smith, Jadyn’s boyfriend.

“Yeah, we’re polar opposites, but we get along,” Trace said.

The proximity isn’t by chance. “We picked rooms across from each other,” Jadyn said.

But, why?

Trace, smirking, explained. 

“I have to protect them,” he said, a sentiment that doesn’t surprise their mom, Shanie Crews. “Trace, he takes care of everybody,” she said. “He wants to know everything that’s going on.” 

This is what happens when someone asks them about their class schedules. The responses come rapid fire, a crash course in listening skills.

Trace: “I’m with her (Makenna) in science.”

Makenna: “I’m with her (Jadyn) in math.”

Makenna, glancing at Jadyn: “Then I have one with her boyfriend. I have only one class (where) I’m not with any of them.”

Jadyn: “It’s nice to have somebody to talk to.”

Trace, glancing at Jadyn: “She won’t just talk to a stranger. But now, I can make a friend with a brick. It doesn’t matter to me.”

It took the triplets a day at UWA to become temporarily famous thanks to a UWA TikTok video of impromptu interviews with parents of freshmen. Shot on move-in day at Gilbert Hall, the video featured UWA students and their family members schlepping suitcases and dorm furnishings in the August heat. By chance, Trace had a starring role, as did their mom.

“My first class, I went to public speaking and I introduced myself, and my teacher said, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a triplet,’” Trace said. Students have stopped him on campus and in hallways. He’s a TikTok triplet, they say. “I don’t know who they are, but they know who I am,” he said. 

‘It’s always been the three of them’

If it sounds as if Trace, Makenna and Jadyn finish each other’s sentences, as if they communicate in glances and gestures indecipherable to others, it’s because they do. Strangers don’t talk with them; they jump into a conversation circle that’s friendly and welcoming and yet dizzyingly swift, a captivating example of siblings who’ve spent almost no significant amount of time apart — ever.

The triplets were born Aug. 27, 2004, at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa. Trace came first, at 2:59 p.m. Makenna, the middle child, came next at 3:02. Jadyn, the youngest, appeared at 3:05. Shanie knew she was having triplets, though Makenna’s telling of that family story is more flavorful: When informed there were three babies, Shanie told her doctor “to quit looking because she didn’t want to know that there were more if there were any more.” Triplet births occur once in every 10,000 pregnancies, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Identical triplet births are much rarer. 

Before they enrolled at UWA, Makenna Crews, Trace Crews and Jadyn Crews were well-known in Gordo for their togetherness. (Crews family photo)

Not once have the Crews girls been apart on their birthday. Trace has missed only one of their combined celebrations, thanks to tonsil surgery and a potential COVID-19 exposure among them. As they aged, they each got their own birthday cake. They’re unanimously glad that they’re not identical twins. Makenna and Jadyn share their mom’s red hair; Trace gets his curly brown hair from their dad, he said. They grew up together, graduated in the same high school class, enrolled together in the same incoming class at UWA, live within earshot in the same dorm, and Shanie isn’t surprised by any of it. That’s just who they are.

“It’s because it’s always been the three of them, and everybody just looks at them as one,” she said. “They’ve always been the kind that if they were separated, they worried about the other ones.”

Choosing majors at UWA

If there’s a surprise in their path from Gordo to Livingston, it’s that it didn’t happen in habitual lockstep. Through a program with the Pickens County College & Career Center, Trace had worked as a teacher’s aide for second- and fifth-grade classes and earned college credit hours. Enrolling in UWA’s College of Education — as a sophomore — made sense. His goal is to become a middle-school teacher.

Makenna wasn’t initially swayed by her brother’s decision and planned to attend cosmetology school in Tuscaloosa, she said. But a campus visit introduced her to UWA’s Integrated Marketing Communications major, and she was so enamored that she joined her brother at UWA.

Jadyn was the wild card. She “knew what she wanted to do, but she didn’t want to go to UWA with Trace,” their mom said. The youngest Crews triplet was a potential outlier in the constant togetherness. “Out of any of us, she’d be the one that would rather be on her own,” Makenna said. Jadyn doesn’t disagree. “Yeah, I didn’t have to be around around them,” she said. But she loves the beach and the sea and dreams of becoming a marine biologist. When she learned about UWA’s marine biology major and its field work in marine habitats, there was no need to follow a different path than her siblings. The thought of combining education with summer trips to Dauphin Island became a major selling point.  

Three it would be, again.

Whether it will remain that way after their time at UWA is complete is an unknown, even to them. Life is hard to predict. Shanie admits that Jadyn’s career plans mean “she’s probably going to be the one to have to move off somewhere.” If you ask the triplets if they’ll always be within arm’s length, siblings living just around the bend from each other, the conversation circle begins again. 

Makenna: “Do you think we will?”

Trace: “I think we will.”

Mackenna, to Jadyn: “I could see you just growing up and being like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know them.’”

Trace, the oldest, looks up and smiles.

“I mean, it was never a dull moment with us,” he said. “And you always have a friend.”