Speed kills. Just ask anyone who’s had to face Ehi Robinson at the track or on the football field.
The Righetti High School senior is a multi-sport star, excelling at track and field, as a sweeper in soccer, and as a starting cornerback for the football team.
At the Santa Barbara County track meet in Carpinteria on April 25, Robinson won the 200-meter dash, and placed second in both the 100-meter and the 4-by-100 relay as the team’s anchor.
The 6-foot-1, 170-pound Robinson said he’s just doing what it takes to get stronger and help out his team.
“I’m not over-pushing it,” Robinson said. “I just try to get as much rest as I possibly can and show up and perform to the best of my abilities, and usually my teammates are right there to back me up.”
Righetti track and field coach Ed Hermann said Robinson takes the team leadership role in stride.
“He’s the big gun, and the other guys kind of rally around him,” Hermann said. “It’s a pretty good thing to see.”
Robinson started at Righetti playing soccer, but caught Hermann’s eye by winning the school’s fastest man competition.
“He showed up and the rest is history,” Hermann said. “If a guy’s got speed, we can coach everything else.”
Robinson said working with Righetti’s strength and conditioning coach Monte Nash has helped him a great deal in improving his times.
“He’s a fierce competitor,” Nash said. “He takes winning and losing very hard, and it makes it easy to coach someone like that. We try to put him in the best position to succeed, which is just to prepare him as much as possible. He has a lot of natural ability, and I’ve seen over the past few years he’s really developed a work ethic that enables him to have the success that he’s had.”
Robinson, who runs the 100-meters in 11 seconds flat, said he’s pursuing a college scholarship to West Hills Community College and a degree in management.
Hermann said he hopes his team goes deep in the California Interscholastic Federation this season with Robinson carrying the 200- and 400-meter events.. The Righetti track team will start league preliminaries on May 2 in Atascadero with the finals to be held on May 7.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 7, 2009.