Coach of Year: Robinson guides youthful New Paltz to successful 15-4 campaign
It’s been 10 years since New Paltz last won a MidHudson Athletic League boys basketball championship, 17 since its last Section 9 crown and four since it last played for one. The Huguenots are due. And it appears the program may have finally turned a corner.
“I think New Paltz, in general, we get treated as an unknown. I think that we don’t always get that respect,” said Hugies coach Stuart Robinson. “Sometimes, when it happens, I think that we are viewed as being lucky.
“We don’t have the tradition and the history of a Red Hook or the string of success of a Marlboro. There are times that people look at New Paltz as, ‘Oh, that was a fluke,’ or that was the squirrel-found-a-nut type of situation. We don’t believe that. We don’t think of that. I think that we are poised to have a consistent run. We were a bit of an unknown, but I
don’t think that people really knew what to make out of us. I always believed in ourselves.”
The Freeman’s Coach of the Year saw a team that featured two sophomores in its starting lineup go from 9-10 last season to 15-4, reach the MHAL title game and earn a No. 2 seed in Section 9, Class A. The season ended with backto-back one-point losses: to Spackenkill in the MHAL finals and Wallkill in the A quarterfinals.
“That stung a little bit, because we had done so well, but I think that we’re still very young. I mean, out of our team, we will lose three seniors,” Robinson said. “The core and the bulk of this team is still returning and now I think they are going to return even more hungry because of what happened this year.
“We felt that we could be something more. The guys talked about it. I think, for me, that’s the best part. It wasn’t so much me, but it was them. They wanted it,” he added. “I think for our school the tone was set early by football and, knowing how competitive our guys were, they wanted to be a part of that and they
wanted to share in some of that success on their own terms in basketball. That’s really what helped us.”
There are five players on the basketball team who were also key pieces of New Paltz’s sectional-champion football unit.
“Going into it we always knew that we had the capabilities. I think two years ago we had an unfortunate series of injuries that affected our upperclassmen and that put our underclassmen and our younger guys in positions that they had to play a lot earlier,” Robinson noted. “I think that it was just a maturation process. When I became the head coach we knew that we were going to go through a period of growth. Coming into this year the guys began to believe.”
Robinson had coached the junior varsity team for five years before taking over the varsity in 2014.
The Hugies built confidence with early wins and got a good test in a Warwick Tournament the first week of the season.
“We learned about our own character early on,” said Robinson, who said campaign turned on a decision and stretch of games.
The decision by Robinson and assistant coaches RJ Rosa, Keith Kenney and Ryan Kenney was to
put the ball more in sophomore guard Axel Rodriguez’s hands, asking him to step up as the team’s playmaker and floor leader. He responded with a performance that placed him on the Freeman first team.
The turning point was what Robinson referred to as the “trifecta.” Three games in three days. From Feb. 2-4, New Paltz went to Marlboro for a makeup game, hosted Roosevelt, then played Goshen in the Officials vs. Cancer Tournament at Dutchess Community College. The Hugies swept all three games.
“A New Paltz of old would have been happy to come out of it winning 1 of 3 or 2 of 3, but we came out of it 3-0 against those teams,” Robinson remarked. “Going into that, we didn’t know what to expect, but we didn’t expect that. That’s where we learned a lot about our ourselves and our ability to compete. I think that’s where it really turned for us.
“We had to go on ability. We had to go on adrenaline and we had to go on competitiveness. That’s really what we did, but it also said a lot about us,” he said.
“When we got to the end of beating Goshen, everybody took a breath and it was like, “Look what we just did.” That’s when we knew that we were not just
an average team or were just lucky, but that we are a talented team.”
That provided the spark for the rest of the month. When it knocked off Roosevelt again, this time in the MHAL semifinals, the Hugies were 15-2.
“I think, at that point, people took notice. At that point, people became aware, because they saw an energy, a confidence come out of us that they had not seen out of a New Paltz team before.” Robinson said. “We like to say that we found a little bit of swag in the result of it. That was enjoyable. That was fun.”
The back-to-back season-ending losses will make the team hungrier for next season.
“In the end, it was the physical things that betrayed us down the stretch; not necessarily who we were or what we did,” Robinson said. “It was we didn’t shoot from the line against Wallkill, so we got upset. We didn’t manage very well against Spackenkill. They’re good teams and against good teams, you can’t do that. To me, those are things that are fixable and that you learn with experience and you come back hungry.
“We had such a desire to deliver something that we didn’t want to disappoint. As I always say, ‘Do the little
things.’ We didn’t stay true to ourselves. We tried to do a little bit more, because we wanted to put that special exclamation point on the moment.” he said.
Sophomore Casey Burke, junior Michael Holohan and senior Corey Burke also started, along with either senior Joe DiMarco or junior Jimmy Verney.
“I see a team that’s going to be very excited. I see a team that’s going to be hungrier,” Robinson said.
“They’ll come back having had the taste of this year, but not being satisfied. They’ll come back a bit wiser in terms of how to close out the deal and how to close out the opportunity. I think the program is in very good shape and in very good position. The best part is I won’t have to do the pulling and pushing to do it. I think it will be organic, because it will come from them.”
It certainly appears that New Paltz’s program has turned that corner.
“I think we’re not going to be lucky. It’s not going to be a one year fluke. We’ll be around and we’ll be ready to contend,” Robinson proclaimed.
“There is definitely an expectation that there will be a championship or two in our future, because they will have it no other way.”