The girl smack-dab in the middle of all this unprecedented Bulldog success, the emotional cog making sure these teams roll, the spitfire who backs down from nothing and no one, she’s surprised?
“It’s unexplainable,” said Robinson, whose on-pitch presence looms far bigger than the forward’s 5-foot-2 frame might suggest. “I really have no words for it.”
Maybe she has a point. The recent accomplishments would have been hard to see coming, even for someone so integral in making them real.
After all, no Hemet girls team in history had won a CIF title until the 2010 volleyball team did it.
And, as far as coach Craig Dwinnell knows, this year’s girls soccer team — which features seven volleyball players — is the first in program history to earn a top seed entering the CIF playoffs.
Following a first-round bye, Hemet (20-2-2, 10-0 in Mountain Pass League) opens postseason play on Feb. 22 against the winner of the Garden Grove-Duarte opening-round match.
The Bulldogs will have had to wait 13 days between matches, nearly an eternity for a young athlete who’s been hankering hard to take one last shot at the playoffs.
“I cannot wait to get into CIF and see how these girls handle it, because I have so much faith in them,” said Robinson, who enters the postseason with 23 goals and 16 assists.
Robinson, who scored 29 goals last season, has embraced the role of facilitator, feeding forward Krista Haddock, a freshman who’s put the ball in the net 26 times. Fellow freshman Nola Prickett has scored 23 goals from the midfield.
“We can definitely take it this year,” Robinson added. “We are more than capable.”
If the Bulldogs pull it off, it’ll give Robinson a third CIF championship in the matter of two seasons, and a fine final chapter to a soccer career. After much deliberation, Robinson chose to continue to play volleyball, which meant giving up soccer, the game she’s played since she was 5, because in college the two sports’ seasons coincide.
Robinson has signed on to play at North Idaho College, a competitive junior college where she’ll partake in the pre-veterinary program and continue her education as a libero, the position she’s played for only three years.
She actually began her high school soccer career as a midfielder, before Dwinnell put his most aggressive player in position to really go on the attack.
“She’s quite a spirit, very feisty,” San Jacinto girls soccer coach Walter Guzman said. “In fact, that competitiveness is what makes her good — plus, she’s really fast.”
Robinson’s always been swift, but she hasn’t always been so bold.
“I used to be a really timid player,” Robinson said. “I was super-timid. I didn’t like contact at all.
“Not until one coach (Jose Leyva) forced me to be aggressive because I was so small. I had to make an impact on players. I had to be the first one to, you know, push them around a little. Or else they would take advantage of me.”
“Rosie is a beast out there,” Prickett said. “She’s awesome.”
And she’s of the mind to make sure her teammates stay in step.
“She just wants to win,” Dwinnell said. “She’s won two CIF champions in volleyball, she knows what it means to win and she wants to win.”