Quiet Winner: Robinson's team going for fifth consecutive 1-A state championship

Brian Robinson is only 38, but he is already in a coaching realm that most only dream of.

He's highly respected on the local scene and has turned the Bishop McGuinness girls team into an impenetrable force. He also has built a national reputation for his work with girls basketball.

Somehow, it all doesn't seem to fit the quiet Robinson. As a coach, he has never raised so much as an eyebrow at an official. As a high-school player, he "didn't say 10 words in two years," said his former coach, Howard West.

With McGuinness on the verge of a fifth straight NCHSAA 1-A title -- that chance will come on Saturday against Williamston in Chapel Hill -- Robinson's success is a reminder that nice guys don't always finish last.

In recent years, Robinson has been offered assistant-coaching jobs at several Division I colleges, and he continues to build relationships with outside entities such as USA Basketball. The overtures have made some, such as Athletics Director Jeff Stoller of McGuinness, wonder how long Robinson will stay with the Villains.

But Robinson says he isn't bored. He runs a burgeoning business, 292 Basketball, a spin-off of his successful AAU program, the Winston-Salem Stealers. He said he has been energized by the success of his current McGuinness team, one that has to rely on the help of unproven sophomores to win.

So it seems as if there's strong chance that Robinson, a Winston-Salem native, isn't going anywhere for a while.

"This year's team has been a challenge for me," Robinson said. "Every day is a new challenge, and they definitely have re-energized not just my coaching, but my mind. I enjoy this challenge. I enjoy being at Bishop and the people there.

"And again, you can't put a price on happiness."

Robinson graduated from Reynolds in 1990 and received a business degree from Appalachian State in 1994. But during his junior year of college, he said, he "decided that I wanted to start working with kids and wasn't sure I wanted to be in the business world."

Robinson delivered a handwritten request to Jim Spivey, the AD at Reynolds, asking if he could return to coach junior-varsity baseball and help coach basketball. The request was granted, and Robinson started working at Reynolds during his last semester of college. He spent four years there, two as the JV boys basketball coach and two as a varsity assistant to West.

In 1996, Nell Pollard, a girls basketball player, talked Robinson into forming a summer team for a few girls.

"We did it," Robinson said. "We got beat bad every game, and I told myself I wouldn't do it again, but Nell talked me into it. It went from that one little team to two teams. And then from two it went to four. It had a life of its own."

That's how the Winston-Salem Stealers AAU program started. The program now features 14 teams.

"It's a labor-of-love type deal," Robinson said, adding that he stopped coaching in the program in 2004 to manage it. "I know a lot of people get a lot out of it, so I am happy to do it."

Robinson was hired as the boys basketball coach at Starmount in 1998. Scott Carter, the AD there, said that in four years, Robinson showed a love of basketball and was starting to build the program.

"We felt like he was a good guy and great for our program," Carter said. "But we felt like we would be lucky to keep him, and obviously, we couldn't. Not with his ties to Winston-Salem and his youth program."

In the spring of 2001, Robinson's old neighbor and schoolmate, Marc Pruitt, called and said he was resigning as the girls coach at McGuinness. He suggested Robinson apply for the job.

Robinson said he only wanted to coach high-school boys basketball, but Pruitt persisted. McGuinness officials eventually interviewed Robinson, and Principal George Repass hired him.

Nine seasons later, Robinson has a record of 201-43 with the Villains and a 248-87 overall record.

Just as Robinson credits Pollard for the start of the Stealers, he credits Chante Black and her mother, Mazie Black, with helping plant the seeds for his business, 292 Basketball.

Black, who starred at Duke and now plays for WNBA's Connecticut Sun, was one of the nation's top high-school prospects while playing at East Forsyth. In 2003, Mazie Black asked Robinson to help her pick through the myriad offers her daughter had from college programs.

Through his homework, Robinson made connections with many of the nation's top Division I coaches. He realized the potential of his work and now provides his services to girls who hope to play in college.

"I didn't want to turn it into a recruiting service, but a consulting job," Robinson said. "So I used the business degree I have, and we basically try to help parents understand how the process works. We take kids on college visits. Teach them how to talk to the media, how to eat properly.

"We have an academic consultant, a nutritionist, and we try to make them understand not everyone is going to play in the ACC and the Big East, but there are a lot of Division II and Division III schools out there. It's grown incredibly in the last six or seven years."

Because of McGuinness' success -- four straight state titles since rejoining the NCHSAA -- the program and Robinson have their detractors. At a 2008 news conference after a regional-playoff loss to McGuinness, the losing coach accused Robinson and McGuinness of recruiting before apologizing the next day.

Robinson has had some talented players at McGuinness, with most coming through the school's six Catholic feeder schools.

And regardless of the talent level, his achievements speak for his abilities, said Howard West, who coached three state-championship boys teams at Reynolds and now coaches at Reagan.

"He can flat-out coach," West said. "He teaches fundamentals, and he gets his kids to play hard all the time. I don't care if it's male or female. If you can do those two things, you will have success depending on how much talent you have.

"I saw him come back from college as a quiet guy. His confidence in his ability and knowledge of the game keeps coming out and getting better and better. Brian is still a young man. He will get better and better."

mlinker@wsjournal.com


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