King/Drew softball coach Chay Robinson works to hold her team accountable in the classroom and on the field.
Robinson has been coaching the Golden Eagles girl’s softball team for 20 years; she has a coaching career that spans 24 years. She started coaching at King/Drew when her daughter was on the team.
“I was coaching from behind the fence,” Robinson said. “My daughter said “Mommy, the girls want you to coach them too, we’ll tell them your signs.””
The King/Drew athletic director at the time expressed a similar sentiment and offered her the role as skipper. Robinson called coaching her “fun job” and she found ways to balance it with her profession: a practitioner at Kaiser Permanente.
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“My bosses allowed me the flexibility to coach for all these 20 years,” Robinson said. “As I moved up into leadership, I told them “if I can’t coach, then I’m not gonna take the promotion,” but they knew that I had so much love for this … they had to put that into my deal when they promoted me.”
With her grade checks and study hall sessions before practice, Robinson encourages her players to be high-performing student athletes. Every student who wants to join the team is required to write an essay. This allows her to learn about who the student is and what they want to gain from playing softball.
“I talked about being the oldest and how that experience in being pressured to be the leader … and being the third parent, how that helped me,” said King/Drew softball player Brooklyn Walker. “I realized sports overall helps me with my mentality as well as with my academics and social life, and so I incorporated that into my essay.”
During the 2023-2024 season, Robinson had to combine the junior varsity and varsity teams together.
“My J.V. girls would come out to my tournaments on the weekends,” Robinson said. “Our parents would take them all the way out to the valley for tournaments.”
When the team reached the playoffs last year, Robinson held a classroom practice to refresh the team on the fundamentals of the sport.
“We’re gonna reset,” Robinson said. “We’re gonna start from zero again and we went over basic softball.”
Robinson also gives advice to her players that help them as people. King/Drew pitcher Jordan Garcia mentioned how not to “sweat the small stuff.”
“I think in every other aspect, I do that a lot, like at school, with grades,” Garcia said. “[Robinson] definitely has helped me, it’s not going to hurt you … it’s not hurting the team so don’t worry about it.”
