Olympics
June 5, 2024
HERMOSA BEACH, California — It sounds terrible, to inform you the reality.
Eight hours a day in a gymnasium in Beijing, China. A rustic you’ve by no means been to, on a contract you signed as a result of it was the lone give you had. Solely American in your crew. Not a lick of English spoken. However hey, no less than you already know your favourite Chinese language meals is orange rooster! Not that it issues. Most hours of the day, waking and infrequently in any other case, are spent within the sports activities corridor. You eat there. Nap there. Work there.
It’s the kind of atmosphere which may break a 22-year-old coming off among the finest particular person NCAA seasons within the nation. However Kelsey Robinson Prepare dinner was not your typical 22-year-old. She isn’t your typical something.
She is, quite the opposite, the kind of athlete that loves these things. Lengthy days within the gymnasium? Rep after rep after rep?
“1000’s of reps,” she says on SANDCAST: Seashore Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter.
She hasn’t but skilled the comfortable lifetime of the Italian League. Hasn’t but performed for a coach in Puerto Rico whose solely rule is to not come into the gymnasium with sand in your toes. Hasn’t been given the rundown of a correct contract negotiation, the place you may ask for issues, restrict your hours, the place you may “actually,” she says, “make it an attractive expertise.”
However her choice then is a uncooked magnificence, the kind you may see in a Rocky film. These lengthy and grinding hours within the gymnasium, making the micro enhancements that solely she will be able to see and really feel. Perhaps her stat line will present it as an out of doors hitter on Beijing BAIC Motor. Perhaps not. However she is aware of. She’s at all times recognized.
These reps will someday be the distinction.
They at all times have been.
“I simply got here from a really rigorous childhood so far as sports activities go,” Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned. “I performed at a membership that was very militaristic and demanding in a whole lot of methods and for me it was at all times a selection. My mother and father by no means compelled it upon me, I at all times wished to be there. I’ve been a gymnasium rat since I used to be a bit child. I used to be there from 3 to 11 and waking up at 5 to go to tournaments on the weekends. From the very starting of my profession professionally, I wasn’t capable of separate volleyball as my identification and that’s who I used to be. I feel that keenness and work ethic have carried me a great distance.”
There have been a pair of paradoxical motifs all through Robinson Prepare dinner’s life: An indomitable will to win, and a vexing dose of self-doubt that has made profitable an inevitability. The primary phrase she factors to when describing an 11-year profession laden with gold medals, historic firsts, and lavished with accolades? Luck. The second? Work.
“I attribute my profession to actually being fortunate,” she mentioned. “I work actually onerous, however generally it’s really simply someone who sees what you can be and chooses you. I owe a whole lot of that to Karch [Kiraly] as a result of he did that for me.”
There may be some fact that to attain one thing that will probably be remembered in historical past books, luck typically performs a job. However luck would have long term its course by now. And although Robinson Prepare dinner mentions that Kiraly, the top coach of the USA Nationwide Staff, took a flier on the surface hitter from Nebraska, it was no stroke of windfall that hers was a reputation he knew.
John Prepare dinner made certain of that. Her coach at Nebraska — and now household after she married his nephew, Brian, whom she met after they have been each enjoying professionally in Italy — knew that Robinson Prepare dinner has a present for a lot of issues. Self-promotion just isn’t one in all them. He’d tried to get Robinson Prepare dinner to play for him all 4 years at Nebraska. He solely had the prospect for one after she performed her first three seasons at Tennessee after which grew to become the Huge Ten participant of the yr as a senior.
“The rationale she informed me she didn’t come to Nebraska was as a result of she didn’t suppose she may play right here,” Prepare dinner informed Husker.com in Could of 2017.
It was without delay an absence of religion in her talents and in addition, considerably paradoxically, an unbridled confidence in herself that led her to start her profession as an alternative at Tennessee, then an unproven program, a clean slate upon which Robinson Prepare dinner may creator her personal legacy and that of the crew.
“I may see myself serving to form this system and it was necessary to me to play as a freshman. I didn’t know if I’d have the chance to try this at Nebraska as a result of I wasn’t actually an enormous time recruit,” she mentioned. “I had a whole lot of nice alternatives nevertheless it wasn’t like ‘She’s going to be every little thing.’ I wished that probability to develop and work onerous.”
Develop? Work onerous? She did that and extra. All-SEC as a freshman. Convention Participant of the 12 months as a sophomore, the primary Volunteer to ever declare that honor. SEC chief in double-doubles as a junior. When issues started to go south in Knoxville and he or she tinkered with the notion of transferring, there have been no onerous emotions from John Prepare dinner about being spurned the primary time round. She was adequate for him then. She was greater than adequate for his program now.
Even then, with a resume already getting prolonged, her going to Nebraska had little to do along with her aspirations in a gymnasium. When Robinson Prepare dinner was a senior in 2013, Volleyball TV was nonetheless a decade away from being constructed. She couldn’t pull up the Italian League on her telephone, or stream Nations League matches on her laptop computer. The one notion {that a} path to enjoying professionally got here each 4 years, throughout the Summer season Olympic Video games.
She was extra fascinated by seaside.
“The one factor that caught out to me was Misty [May-Treanor] and Kerri [Walsh Jennings],” Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned, referencing the pair who had simply received a 3rd consecutive gold medal on the London Olympics. “After I acquired to Nebraska, I nonetheless wasn’t in that mindset of considering I used to be going to go professional. I used to be considering I’m going to play seaside.”
There may be little doubting she would have been elite on the sand. However Robinson Prepare dinner’s potential in a gymnasium was apparent, confirmed, measurable. It was right here and now, making her a finalist for the Honda Award. And in addition to: It was Could-Treanor herself who really useful that Robinson Prepare dinner go indoors first, make some cash. The seaside would at all times be there. Prepare dinner helped guarantee indoor can be, too. He positioned a name to Kiraly, informing him of Robinson Prepare dinner’s expertise and work ethic. So no, it wasn’t luck in any respect, or Kiraly taking a blind probability on Robinson Prepare dinner, that she discovered herself within the USA nationwide crew gymnasium in the summertime of 2014.
Robinson Prepare dinner earned that luck all on her personal.
“I informed Kelsey if she will be able to’t do it as an out of doors hitter, perhaps you is usually a libero,” Prepare dinner mentioned. “So Kelsey went on the market in Could, participated within the tryouts and, after all, she made the crew and stayed in this system.”
She made the crew, had her eyes opened to a world she was solely simply realizing existed: Life as an expert volleyball participant. However as a result of she was so late to the scene, the one contract she was provided was in Beijing. And since she was so new, a rookie’s rookie, she nonetheless had no thought what the lifetime of an expert volleyball participant regarded like.
These lengthy days within the Beijing sports activities corridor, those that will flip many athletes to the seaside or an workplace again house, will not be the norm, one thing she would discover out quickly sufficient. However they have been little slices of masochistic heaven to somebody like Robinson Prepare dinner.
“I simply thought that is what it’s, that is how we do it,” she mentioned. “I’m simply going to point out up, work onerous.”
It’s these days in China that she credit as forming the spine of her recreation as an expert. Her enchancment was such that she made the USA roster and received a World Championship. She has since added three Nations League golds and two Olympic medals. Her proper arm was the fulcrum of a USA crew that, in 2021, claimed the primary Olympic gold within the nation’s historical past. Individually, she has laid declare to each accolade an out of doors hitter may need — MVP of the Italian League, Greatest Outdoors Hitter within the Champions League, Greatest Outdoors Hitter of the FIVB Grand Prix and the World Cup and the World Championship.
That “present up, work onerous” mentality has led her to success on golf equipment all over the place from China to Puerto Rico to Italy to Türkiye to Japan and again to China and Italy once more. It has molded the tradition inside the USA Nationwide Staff gymnasium, the place she has been described by teammates and coaches as “fiery,” a “fireball,” and, amongst different descriptors of intense warmth, “a bit spark.”
“While you play with Kelsey, there’s little question that she goes to compete,” former libero Kayla Banwarth informed the Chicago Union-Tribune. “She goes to deliver every little thing she’s acquired.”
She does this as a result of, for Robinson Prepare dinner, what can be the purpose of doing something much less?
And underneath the attention of Kiraly, what different selection does anybody within the USA gymnasium have?
The ladies’s nationwide crew is as deep and gifted because it has ever been. There are dozens of supremely gifted girls vying for simply 12 spots. A wholesome rigidity, iron sharpening iron, shaping the People into the No. 2 crew on the earth, behind solely Türikye. However rigidity nonetheless.
“The atmosphere that we dwell in may be very troublesome. You’re competing for a spot with a few of your greatest buddies and in 11 years I’ve seen a lot heartbreak,” Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned. “Some days are good, some days are dangerous. There’s years the place you need to stop and you retain asking your self why do you need to do that, why do you retain exhibiting up? However what I’ve discovered is it’s a must to perceive why you’re doing it. It may be completely different from individual to individual to particular person, however why am I moving into this gymnasium? Why am I competing? Why am I selecting that? On the finish of the day, it’s one particular person’s selection. Our coach decides both you’re on this crew otherwise you’re not.
“I do know that I may need my coronary heart damaged however I’m OK with that as a result of I’m going to point out up for me and I’m going to compete with ardour and pleasure, these are the issues that fill me up. I’m OK that someday it’d break me. That’s one thing I attempt to instill in different individuals. You must do it for you. In the end, you exhibiting up and your fullest self goes to infiltrate this crew the easiest way.
“In crew sports activities it may be onerous as a result of you may get wrapped up in we’re not assembly the usual, we’re not doing this nicely, this particular person didn’t run that ball down, they’re not giving effort. The extra you get caught up in that stuff, you may actually spiral and that simply takes you out of your individual efficiency. One thing I dwell by on daily basis is that it begins with me. Not me saying that you must try this or that was good, nevertheless it begins with me when it comes to how I compete, how I present up, how onerous I am going for each level as a result of finally individuals will get on my again and we’ll go collectively. That’s how I method on daily basis.”
