USL PRO Feature
Monday, September 23, 2013
At first glance, the key moment in Nate Robinson being named the 2013 USL PRO Rookie of the Year was when Richmond Kickers Coach Leigh Cowlishaw decided the then 22-year-old had what he was looking for at the club’s Pro Combine in March.
According to Robinson, however, the path to his individual success this season began in the PDL with the Michigan Bucks in the summer of 2012.
“The year before [2011] with the Bucks, we had so many people coming in and out, you would go out to train and if they don’t think you’re up to par then they say you can’t come back to training, and that’s what happened to me, that I wasn’t even invited back to train in a pool of 30 players,” Robinson said by phone recently.
“Coming back to the Bucks [in 2012] and being able to contribute, I mean, Coach Gary Parsons put a lot of faith in me, and the team was awesome. It was an awesome experience.”
Robinson helped the Bucks claim the 2012 PDL Regular Season Championship, and while the side lost out in the playoffs, the experience he gained ahead of his senior season in college gave him the confidence he would be able to have a chance at making it in the pro ranks.
The opportunity to do that came from the Kickers, who announced Robinson’s signing the day before their opening game of the USL PRO season. Determined to avoid spending much of the season on the substitutes bench, Robinson worked his way into the Kickers’ starting 11 for the club’s third game of the season, and immediately picked up two assists in a 4-1 win against Rochester.
“I think when any player starts contributing, and feels comfortable on the field like they’re making a contribution to the lineup, that’s when your confidence starts picking up,” Robinson said. “You ride on that from there, and then each performance hopefully gets better and better from there.”
While the Kickers returned a veteran squad, Robinson’s performances made it difficult to omit him from the starting lineup. After picking up five assists in the Kickers’ opening seven games, Robinson scored his first goal in a 2-0 win against the Harrisburg City Islanders.
“There’s a picture in the Richmond Times-Dispatch of me and Mike Callahan, and the look on my face is just pure emotion, basically,” Robinson said. “I felt like I’d been knocking on the door all season long to score a goal, and to finally break that barrier was just such an emotional high I can’t describe it.”
As Robinson’s playing time increased, so did his confidence. He also tried to quickly apply the techniques he learned from his more experienced teammates, such as All-League First Team selection Joseph Ngwenya, a veteran of Major League Soccer.
“[He] seems to know when he has just a half-second to turn, or exactly where a defender is and what positions he can get into and do what he does best, which is dribble at players and go at speed,” Robinson said. “I feel like I have the same attributes as he does, and just watching him, the biggest thing I learned was spatial awareness and just being mentally engaged the whole game. That’s really helping me going forward.”
Robinson and the Kickers had an outstanding regular season, claiming the Commissioner’s Cup by a point from Orlando City in part thanks to a 22-game undefeated streak. Robinson played a role in that success, finishing the season with four goals and nine assists, but as he and his teammates tried to remain focused on one game at a time, one of the most telling characteristics of the side was the way different players stepped up at difference moments, with late goals from unlikely sources proving key throughout the remarkable run.
“Those types of games are when you just have certain players step up and put in goals,” Robinson said. “Like Shane Johnson at Phoenix. That’s a guy who started a lot last year, played a ton of games, and this year didn’t play as many minutes. But when he was called upon in a tough road game, he went out and got a huge goal for us.
“To me, that’s a learning experience I had while I was with the Kickers, that some games you’re not going to play great, but what makes a great team is being able to have certain players step up in that moment, and the whole team wanting to win. Once you step on the field, no outside feelings, just pure grit, and that’s what some of those wins and results came from.”
Now, Robinson is hoping to use the experience he gained this season. After training with the Kickers’ partner in Major League Soccer, D.C. United, and appearing for the New York Red Bulls’ reserve team in their game against Toronto FC’s Reserves on September 15, Robinson is hoping his award-winning season will open doors for him at the next level.
“When I first saw that I was a finalist, I was just humbled,” Robinson said. “All of a sudden, everything had come into one little award, and I felt so grateful for that. To move on sometimes in your career, you need to have that, you need to have the accolades, and I think that’s something that’s really going to help me in the future, and I’m really grateful for.”
Where Robinson has reached, and where he might be headed in the future, also make him think back to where it began.
“It’s been a ride. That’s the best way to describe it, you know?” he said. “That thought rarely escapes my mind, how lucky I feel, and also how much hard work has gone into it, not just my hard work, but my parents’ hard work, and its finally coming to solidify. It’s such an amazing feeling, and I’m going to take that energy and use it to train harder and work harder.”