Robinson our All-City player of year
Edmond Santa Fe senior Kaeli Robinson is The Oklahoman’s All-City volleyball player of the year after leading the Wolves to a state title.
At age 11, Kaeli Robinson was told she would be a scary good volleyball player once she figured it all out.
New to the sport, nobody in her family had hardly even seen a match, let alone played it.
But Robinson's raw athleticism was evident even at a young age, the signs of a future highflying force around the nets was etched all over her game.
“Her coach pulled her aside to talk one day,” Robinson’s mom, Lisa Johnson, recalled. “She said, ‘I can’t wait to see you when it all clicks.’”
Fast forward seven years and Robinson was facing off against her old coach who predicted her rise.
Lisa Polcovich, now the head coach at Deer Creek, felt the full force of Robinson’s more matured game as she lead Edmond Santa Fe to a 3-0 Class 6A semifinals win against the Antlers.
Robinson was sensational for Edmond Santa Fe as they repeated as state champions after taking out Stillwater 3-0 in the finals.
She recorded 314 kills this season, and scored key point after key point for the Wolves, who didn’t drop a set throughout the entire state tournament.
“Winning the state tournament wasn’t our biggest mindset,” said Robinson, The Oklahoman’s All-City volleyball player of the year. “It really was getting better each week and improving. We did that by focusing on the little things more instead of the bigger obstacles.”
The big obstacles mostly revolved around every team gunning for the defending champs.
Bringing your A-game to each and every match can be hard, so Robinson made sure to try and keep things light for her teammates during tense moments.
“I just try to make the serious ones on our team laugh,” she said. “People take sports so seriously, but my mom has always tried to stress to me how it’s just a game. We want to have fun.”
Robinson is heading to the University of Central Oklahoma next year to play volleyball for the Bronchos.
Robinson talked a lot about the sense of relief she and her teammates felt after successfully defending their state title.
Now, she’s looking forward to sending more crushing kills toward opponents at the next level.
“That’s the best feeling in the world,” she said. “Just knowing that nobody could touch it.
“That’s the best.”