We spoke to Coach Katie Robinson about her squad’s tough mentality, flying under the radar and the impact a state tournament has on a program.
Coach first off what are your thoughts on making state?
We’re pretty excited. All summer we preach to them that what we do now determines what happens in March. We kind of kept pushing them and we weren’t easy on them by no means. and we told them once the season started we just kind of wanted to fly under the radar taking one game at a time.
And you know they bought into that philosophy so we made it we weren’t surprised because we knew we could do it but we are so excited for them just because they put in so much hard work in the off season and just during the season that was just so awesome to see that they were rewarded for the hard work.
Yeah two years ago you guys got 14 wins, last year got 15, this year 16. So what do you think’s been the key to that steady improvement in your guys’s program?
I took over the helm here, this is my fifth season, and I’m kind of one of those old school basketball mentalities. When we started 5 years ago we definitely focused on the fundamentals and every day throughout practice we are doing something with fundamentals and we’re improving those little things in our game.
I think having fundamentals and being strong with them is the key to being successful. Any season the girls just keep getting tougher and we just keep challenging them. We’ve had a lot of good athletes throughout the program and the girls are just brought into that.
And we work them hard and when they come to practice they know they come to work and that’s the same mentality we have to take into a game, and you know these girls have just stepped up and every year we just push them harder and harder.
Early on in the season you guys had a very, very tough schedule. Got a couple losses early on tell me how you guys work through that and pushed onto keep having success throughout the rest of the year?
Our six losses this season…You know they’re not easy teams by no means. We opened up the season with Groton, we lost to them by one and during overtime we had our two main scores on the bench. We learned a lot from that game.
You know each of these games we’ve definitely taken something from it. For the girls we just go back and reflect on it and we say “okay this is what we need to get better at when we take it to the next game.”
So by the time we got to the SoDak 16, we’ve had a lot of tough games, a lot of battle tested is what I’ve heard some people tell us and that’s very true. So when we got to postseason play we had been in a lot of different tough games so the girls just never lost their composure and kept working hard.
When that final horn went off at the SoDak 16 what were just your overall feelings?
I don’t think I truly really believed it until there was about 12 seconds left and I looked over at my assistance and I smiled…You know I have two great assistants, they’ve worked really hard with me this season to get our girls to this point, and I finally looked over and it was almost a sigh of relief for the simple fact that we’ve wanted this so bad. So just to finally get there after having a tough region last few years, it was just kind of like “yes all this work is totally worth it.”
We can all enjoy it now and go on to the next step and enjoy being one of the top eight teams in the state this weekend.
You know coach you have a lot of guards on your team just kind of talk to me about that and what’s your strategy having a lot of those players?
Yeah Kaylie Robinson she’s our point guard, she’s able to go inside out. Lexie Goertz is our shooting guard, they’re built pretty much the same so they cause some mismatch problems if they put a smaller guard on them, we can stick them inside to post up. If they put a bigger girl on them because they’re doing that we can pull them back out and they can get around them.
You know Addison Bartholow, she’s our freshman post this year, she’s actually played a point guard spot up until this season, so she’s kind of the same way we can stick her inside we can pull her out she can play guard. And on defense Rhayonna Hood she’s one of our senior starting guards she’s a strong gal we can stick her on someone
But you know just with our size and our strength because of mismatch problems and we’re always looking to see if someone’s a man do we have a mismatch.
That’s one thing we’ve been able to utilize all season is our strength and our mismatches. They’re strong girls, they’re smart girls and it’s nice that we can get in there and battle with that mentality. No one’s afraid to step up to the plate to make those hustle plays.
You talked a little bit about flying under the radar this year kind of talk to me about that Dark Horse mentality.
Not a lot of people know James Valley Christian basketball until now when we’ve gotten our name out there and sometimes there’s that added pressure when you’re one of those top teams and a team can fold pretty easily under that pressure. So we just kept telling our girls one game at a time we don’t need to look at PowerPoints, we don’t need to look at seeding, we don’t need to look at any of that until the end of the season and it doesn’t matter you know we’re going to have a lot here or there that’s why you play the game of basketball we just have to learn and move on and get better from it.
You know I think you’re one of the only people that had us at the eight to state based on the strength of our schedule otherwise we didn’t get a lot of recognition throughout the season.
But we’re totally fine with that and I told the girls you don’t need that you don’t need that to get the state. That’s not going to help you get to state you just gotta keep working hard.
We always told them from the beginning, God has our journey planned out for us so we just have to work hard and if we’re there, we’re there and if we’re not, we’re not. We just got to do our job and hopefully we end up there when we want to be.
Now, you guys are going to go play Arlington. This is a team that you’ve played earlier this year, but you guys played them really close and it was a really good game at their place. What are your thoughts coming into that first matchup?
You know one of the nice things about being the eight seed is you have no target on your back. I feel like we’re playing our best basketball…We’re very familiar with them being in our region.
We did have a good game against them. Like I said before we lost by two and had a couple shots at the end that just didn’t fall. You know we’re tweaking a few things but defensively we’re coming up with a solid game plan. So I think it’s going to be a great game. I think the state tournament is going to be a great state tournament there’s a lot of equal teams.
Breaking through that wall you guys haven’t made state in over a decade, how’s this going to impact your team and your program going forward?
This year our Junior High program went 17 and 3. Last year they were undefeated. Our JV had a good season and we’re big on being a basketball family. We practice together and it brings some excitement for all these girls to have the success and make it to state and you can kind of feel that excitement that these girls are like “oh man this is what it takes to get there.”
Last time they went a lot of these girls were not in school or super young so being part of this now I think it’ll create a new drive and new excitement so I think it’s a great building tool for our program.
This article is our part of our coaches’ interview series presented by The Move Group. To see the complete list, check out our website below.
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