Robinson Representing
UW Athletic Communications
5/7/2020
Seattle truly shined through much of April. On April 10, when the Husky Beach Volleyball team was set to play its home opener at Alki Beach, temperatures hit 66-degrees under crystal clear skies. These were the spring days that the Beach Dawgs wait for all year, keeping them in mind while they don a wetsuit in November or break up the frozen sand before a January practice.
Of course, the beaches were abandoned this April 10, with yellow caution tape strung between the net posts in case anyone needed reminding. Washington’s just-getting-started 2020 season was done after two weeks and seven matches due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Natalie Robinson and the rest of the Huskies, what seemed unthinkable at the time quickly and shockingly became the new normal.
“When we were in L.A. (for the Pac-12 South Invitational) there was kind of chatter starting about maybe we might miss a few games. Maybe we can’t fly to Hawaii next weekend,” Robinson says. “The other teams are like, ‘Whoa, they’re from Seattle, that’s where the Coronavirus is,’ but it wasn’t anything we took seriously. Next week at practice it was cold and wet and someone joked that this could be our last one so we should appreciate it, and we all said no, of course it won’t be. Later that day in the locker room we got the Pac-12 notification that all competition had been canceled."
From there things snowballed, with UW canceling all team activities and soon after the NCAA canceled all spring sport championships, sending shockwaves through the hundreds of Husky student-athletes. Spring classes were moved online and rather than heading for a big beach tournament in Honolulu, the Huskies headed back to their hometowns.
“Every day there was something huge and new and you were just waiting for the next big announcement,” says Robinson.
She took her finals online to finish out winter quarter and then headed home to Mercer Island, with the whirlwind coming to a sudden halt for an uneventful spring break.
“That was when I had nothing else to look forward to,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking ‘maybe this or maybe that could happen,’ it was ‘nope, you’re just at home waiting.’ So that was when we started processing it all and we’re still in limbo waiting for the next thing. Hopefully the next thing will be good news, but it might not be, so everyone’s just waiting and trying to stay as optimistic as you can.”
Every day there was something huge and new and you were just waiting for the next big announcement.
In the meantime, Robinson has developed a consistent quarantine schedule of fitness, schoolwork, and virtual connections with friends and teammates. There’s only one problem. “I discovered that I don’t have any hobbies,” she laughs. “I don’t really watch TV at school so I’m trying to catch up on some pop culture stuff that I missed the first time around.”
Rejoining the nest after a college student has flown the coop took some getting used to, but Natalie is grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with her younger sister Nina, a freshman in high school, as well as the family dog, Eddie.
“Usually you go home for a week, and you’re more of a guest than a member of the household, and now I’ve had to fully integrate back in, get on the dishes schedule, and figure out when I’m going to put my laundry in, but it works pretty well. My whole family is pretty independent and we let each other get stuff done. We’ll play a game or two a couple nights a week.”
Nothing takes away the sting of the season cut short. A team that was only just forming its identity now won’t get to see what it was capable of, and while the majority of the 2020 Husky team will return, including Robinson, several have played their final matches on the beach, unceremoniously.
“You want to always send the seniors out on the best note. We had an amazing group of seniors from indoor who worked really, really hard. They have a brutal six weeks of training before the season where they just get thrown in, and they improve so much in that time. They had a lot they wanted to prove and show off and they didn’t get the chance. Our grad transfers worked all fall and all winter, integrating into the team and establishing leadership and just getting better. They just never get the chance to demonstrate all of their improvement and hard work, so that’s disappointing for sure.”
In Robinson’s case, she was only just getting to prove how much progress she’d made over a 14-month stretch where she devoted herself solely to beach volleyball for the first time in her career. Robinson came to UW ready to play both indoor and beach volleyball, but always planned to transition fully to beach after two seasons of indoor. So following the 2018 indoor season, Robinson threw herself fully into the sand, redshirting the 2019 season to maximize her time as a beach-only player.
The result from the time and focus was obvious, as Robinson went from playing in the No. 5 position as a freshman in 2018 to the No. 2 position in the first two weeks of 2020.
Our grad transfers worked all fall and all winter, integrating into the team and establishing leadership and just getting better. They just never get the chance to demonstrate all of their improvement and hard work, so that’s disappointing for sure.
“The first thing I did to improve was just get a lot more physically fit, so I was in the weight room a ton and doing a lot of cardio,” says Robinson. “You learn how to lift after a while so working to get stronger and more physically fit has made a huge difference.”
Fitter and stronger, she knew the best way to learn was from experience, so Robinson played every match she could find in the summer of 2019, teaming up with former Husky Kaleigh Nelson, an indoor All-American who played No. 1 for UW in its first ever beach season in 2014.
“Kaleigh and I traveled all over the West Coast from Canada down to California, just playing as many tournaments as possible, and I got to face a lot of the top professional and college players just to see where I was at. The more you play really good players the better you’re going to get.”
Through the first seven matches this season, Robinson paired up with a newcomer to the team, Chloe Loreen. And while there was a lot of season left for Head Coach Steve Whitaker to mix up the pairings and develop new combos, Robinson and Loreen had a sense they might be together in 2020. It wasn’t their first time as teammates, as they played a year of club together as seniors in high school before Loreen started her collegiate career at Santa Clara and Robinson stayed close to home.
Robinson saw Loreen again last summer at Seaside where Loreen started asking her old teammate about the UW beach team. “I didn’t think anything about it but then she committed,” Robinson says. “So that was really exciting because she’s a really talented athlete and she’s also very driven and very goal-oriented. We played together at the fall scrimmage and we just meshed well. We’re both very competitive, neither of us are super loud on the court but we definitely fire each other up.”
One reason why Robinson might have found herself lacking in hobbies is because she doesn’t leave herself a ton of time, what with a double major and her ever-increasing role as a leader of the Washington Student-Athlete Advisory Council (WSAAC).
More than halfway through her junior academic year, Robinson owns a 3.50 cumulative GPA while majoring in both Political Science and Communication, with a minor as well in Law, Society, and Justice.
Additionally, over the past two years, Robinson has gone from the volleyball sport representative for WSAAC to one of the two Vice President positions, and now recently she took that a step further, applying for and earning the position of the Pac-12 Conference representative for the national SAAC. That two-year position will take Robinson to several NCAA conferences a year.
Her leadership role within the student-athlete community and her studies are perfect complements, Robinson says.
“Political Science is a lot of policy and leadership decisions and looking at how little decisions impact the big picture, and that’s a lot of what WSAAC does. Communication I think speaks for itself. Trying to figure out how to include the most people possible and get the most success for the most people possible.”
At a time like this, with the next match, meet, or round on hold, Husky student-athletes and collegiate athletes across the nation can come together as a community in ways they might typically not. But keeping everyone connected and informed is a challenge and part of WSAAC’s task.
“I recently attended the virtual Pac-12 SAAC meeting, with all the representatives from the schools on one big call to hear what the Pac-12’s approach to this is, what we’re waiting for and what we can expect to see next. So I’m trying to relay that information to people. Then we had a call with (Washington Athletic Director) Jen Cohen so that everyone can hear directly from Jen what’s happening and what we should be expecting for next year.
“It’s hard,” Robinson says, “because nobody has answers, but I think the focus of WSAAC right now is getting people the information they need and making sure the issues that were happening before COVID, like mental health, equity and diversity, don’t get overlooked. It’s figuring out how to shift resources to our new format.
“So that’s been a little more work, but I have a lot more time, so it’s been nice to have something to engage with.”
The focus of WSAAC right now is getting people the information they need and making sure the issues that were happening before COVID, like mental health, equity and diversity, don’t get overlooked. It’s figuring out how to shift resources to our new format.
The hardwood came first for Robinson, back in the fifth grade. She found the beach in middle school, playing junior tournaments at Alki Beach where she would eventually rep the purple and gold. In high school, Robinson got the opportunity to compete in the USA Volleyball High Performance program down in California. “That was when I really felt like I started learning and getting more competitive in beach.”
She came to Husky matches as a young pup and has a picture of her in Alaska Airlines Arena that she guesses is from 2007, seven years before UW would start a beach program. It wasn’t until seeing the Beach Dawgs practicing in person at the Sandbox that she became aware that UW had expanded into the sand.
“I remember my sophomore year of high school I was at the Sandbox for a beach club practice and I actually saw the UW team practicing there and I had no idea at that point that they had a team, so that was pretty cool. I was like, wow, they do have a team and they look pretty good!”
Robinson joined a veteran indoor team coming off consecutive Pac-12 titles in the fall of 2017 and while “it’s always daunting” to come in and compete in a program with players one idolized, she was ready to fight for it. “I felt as prepared as you could be and I knew I was going to work hard and give myself a shot. It was a lot of fun.”
Her shot came suddenly. In the middle of a big Pac-12 road battle at USC, All-American setter Bailey Tanner suffered a hand fracture and Robinson was suddenly up off the bench and subbing in for her first time setting in college.
“As a freshman you’re pretty ambitious, or at least I was, so I was playing every point as if I could go in at any second. But that game against USC, I think my mind went completely blank,” she says. “I don’t remember anything about going in there, I remember I think I actually hit the ball because I was too scared to set it.”
She’d conquer that fear and get back to setting the ball, remaining in the lineup until Tanner returned a few weeks later. Robinson helped the Huskies to a couple big ranked wins over Colorado, and over No. 15 Oregon in five sets as she had a double-double with 29 assists and 10 digs.
“You don’t expect it to happen but I felt like I’d worked as hard as I could leading up to it. I was playing with Jade Finau who was really reassuring the whole time. And the girls were really great; when you have hitters that good, you just have to give them something they can work with so that took a lot of the pressure off knowing I was surrounded by Courtney and Tia and Carly and Crissy, and I had Shayne out there who’s probably the most supportive teammate I’ve ever had.”
Now as a beach-only player, but with two years of indoor experience, Robinson has a unique perspective on how the beach program is growing and how it can forge ahead. This year was only the second year that the beach team had a fall offseason training block, and the eight players participating was up from six the previous year.
“We’ve never had so many beach-only girls focused on improving themselves and the program,” says Robinson. “We got team lifts going, we started getting the beach-only girls more involved in ways they hadn’t been before. Coming from a big sport and knowing everything a team can do at UW, I want to help the beach team grow into that. There’s still a lot of room to grow here and in the NCAA as well as professionally. There are a lot more professional domestic opportunities for beach volleyball.”
The 2020 season was cut painfully short, but the growth of the sport and the program will continue, thanks to the passion of people like Robinson. When the caution tape comes down and the nets go back up, she will be one of the first ones back at Alki Beach.
“We have a bunch of local girls, and we’re all really excited to play, but at the same time I think we have a very publicly aware team and we don’t want to jump the gun at all. We’re going to wait and see what the UW advises, but we all really want to get out there, so as soon as it’s safe we’ll start playing around again.”
It will be a very sweet day at the beach.
