Star’s return home seen as a good move
After three seasons at SHC, Nathan Robinson has left mark at Las Lomas
league championship under first-year head coach Brian Dietschy last season.
Seniors Devin Payne, Robert Prince, Jackson “Homer” Kravets and Jason Holman have been around for the entire ride — they were on the team’s roster as freshmen — and Dietschy is the link between the program’s only squads to reach a regional final, 1988 and now.
The coach, a sophomore 30 years ago, is the program’s all-time leading scorer.
Kravets’ ties to the team go back generations, his mother, Lauren, noted.
Lauren’s brother, Adam Dodge, played for Las Lomas before graduating in 1994 and her father, Richard Dodge, was a star on the school’s 1959 team.
“Unfortunately, he died of cancer four days after Jackson was born and never got to meet his grandson or see him play,” Lauren wrote last weekend in an email. “Needless to say, there are many generations of LL alumni watching and rooting for this team right now, including some of my dad’s classmates and teammates from 1959.”
Expectations for the team would have been high even without Robinson transferring.
But with him, the Knights went from 22-7 to 31-3, from very good to state-title contenders.
“We have some new guys, but they caught on quick,” Prince said Saturday after Las Lomas won the NorCal Division I title with a 44-41 victory over Palo Alto.
The low-scoring regional final showed Las Lomas’ versatility, that the Knights don’t need 70 points to win.
“We went out there and said we can lock it down, too,” Dietschy said. “We can play smart. We can play disciplined. We can do whatever it takes to win.”
The dream season is still alive, with the final stop Friday.
“I did not expect it to end up how it is now,” Robinson said. “In the beginning of the season, everyone talks about winning a state championship. But it’s one thing saying you want to win a state championship and then actually doing it.
“It’s definitely a big accomplishment.”