A coach can make or break a team.
U.S. Olympian and LSU cross country coach Khadevis Robinson joined LSU in 2013 to coach the women’s and men’s cross country teams. Robinson was hired with the hope that his past accomplishments and experience would follow him to Baton Rouge, and he would build a dynasty.
There is truth in that belief, but Robinson said being a successful coach depends on much more than success during your competing career.
“If you put the work in, the time will come,” Robinson said. “It’s a process. We have to ask ourselves, do we want to be a coach, a leader or do we want to be a clown? Clown’s job is to make everybody happy. That’s not the job of a coach or a leader.”
Robinson was raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where he said his family grew up poor, a set of circumstances that contribute to who he is today.
“They had some pretty tough conditions I would say,” Robinson said. “But we came up pretty happy. In those conditions, you’re not really worried because everyone’s in the same position. I think I was pretty fortunate because I always had like a mom and a dad always there.”
Robinson said his stepfather was a part of his life since he could remember but passed away when he was a senior in high school.
He said losing someone so close to him was tough, but the experience prepared him for what was to come in his journey, which included a collegiate national championship and two Olympic berths.
“I had a very non-traditional family because my step dad was actually about 40 to 50 years older than my mom, so they had a really big gap, but my step dad, as far as I’m concerned, was the greatest man who ever lived,” Robinson said. “It kind of woke me up and told me I need to get ready for life, and it got me ready for college.”
Robinson didn’t always plan on running track. In fact, he said he didn’t like it at first, but his high school football coach made the football players participate in track.
He said he had scholarship offers from small schools for football, but more prestigious track programs were jockeying for his talents.
With his stepfather passing away just months before his high school graduation, Robinson was faced with a tough decision: stay close to home near his mom or go to a school across the nation.
“The thing is, my mom and my step dad, they got together when she was 17 or 18 or whatever, and so that’s all she knew,” Robinson said. “When he passed, if I would have left, she would have been by herself. I didn’t want to be too far from my mom given that my step dad just died.”
Robinson said staying close to home and attending Texas Christian University to run track was the best decision of his life. His collegiate career ended in an NCAA Outdoor Championship in the 800-meter dash, and he went on to be crowned the USA Indoor Champion and USA Outdoor Champion in the 800-meter dash each four times.
Putting the same determination into coaching as he did competing, Robinson takes his job seriously.
“You have to be willing to make sacrifices,” Robinson said. “You have to care about your results and your teammates. When you lose, I don’t think you should be happy. It’s a competition. You’ve got to fight, and so we’ve done the workouts, but I don’t know if people have that kind of expectation for themselves.”
At LSU, Robinson said his main goal is to help the team win national championships. His second goal is to establish a stronger distance presence on the track and field team, and he wants to use his position to motivate, inspire and help kids.
Middle distance and cross country freshman runner Dajour Braxton said Robinson will achieve all of his goals, and Robinson already helped him outrun all of his times in a matter of months.
“I really like Khadevis as a coach, and I feel like training has already [made] me stronger to the point I have demolished all of my other times,” Braxton said. “His workouts push me a lot.”