Direct Rays: An Era Apparently Over at Lakeland

Robinson Brothers May Have Flashed Their Last Sign

High School Coaches DON’T always get it right. They DON’T always say or do the right things, despite being pillars of the community in some instances. In fact, coaches are repeatedly wrong and oftentimes judged unfairly because of the decisions they make, some bad, some good… but oftentimes debated by the masses. Coaching high school athletics in this country has gone broken arrow, the most thankless job on earth for thousands of mentors from northern New York to southern California. That rang true in our neck of the woods this past week when

Lakeland Baseball Coaches Dennis and Mike Robinson were essentially asked to leave their post after 40-something years of significant service to the green and gold.

You should know: School officials won’t comment on the matter, and commentary like this is never accepted or appreciated, but we’ve all got our jobs to do. I hope to do mine tastefully while maintaining some street cred here.

Coaches make tough decisions, judgments that can often affect student athletes negatively from time to time. Was I a happy camper when my varsity football coach at Lakeland High ran me as the scout tailback from August 1st until the end of November my senior, but never gave me so much as a single carry in a live game? Heck no! Did

I suck it up and take it like a man despite being ticked off at both Dennis and Mike Robinson? Hell yeah: Because that’s what we did back in the day; back when coaches were to openly swear around student athletes, get in their grills and put a foot in their tuckus when situations dictated doing so.

But times have changed… DRASTICALLY!

Always quick-to-schmooze Dennis Robinson would tell me 20 years later that I was the best “scout back” he ever coached; his way of schmoozing me over, I suppose, but I know I earned a carry or two, and in his heart, he knows, too. Mike Robinson always got his point across the same way since he began coaching, even if it ruffled a flock of fancy feathers from time to time. The Robinson brothers weren’t perfect during their four decades of coaching multiple sports in the Lakeland School District, where baseball was their lifeblood until a wavering Lakeland Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. George Stone apparently pulled the plug on their act last week.

The company line will likely be issued as follows: The Robinsons have decided to retire, what with coach Den not feeling so hot these days and Coach Mike not wanting to give it a go without his lifelong sidekick (yeah, and pigs are flying, I know).

That’s what a board of education makes you say when they force you to resign/retire; but even though I was born at night, it wasn’t last night, and I know for a fact these two baseball junkies weren’t ready to hang up their spikes.

They will likely announce their “retirement” at an end-of-season baseball dinner this week, having fudged their last stat on behalf of getting another kid in college on partial and/or full scholarships.

For every Tim and Chris Murray and every Alex Martinez and Dennis Robinson Jr. they have ever coached, the goal at Lakeland has always been the same: Win or compete for championships, and get kids to play at the next level.

And that they did.

“Did they say and do crazy things from time to time, yeah, no doubt,” said Chris Murray, who went on to play at Niagara after setting records at Lakeland in the mid-90s. “But they made me a man. Not everything in high school sports is peaches and ice cream. Were they [difficult] from time to time, sure they were, but they instilled a work ethic in you that I still value today. When I got to Niagara, we had a two-hour workout on the first day and that was it. I’m like, ‘are you kidding me, this is a warm-up at Lakeland’, but that is how they prepared you. They didn’t do right by everyone, but tradition has to mean something and I’m sick to my stomach over this.”

Yeah, they ticked some people off, to the point where some would not return to ‘The Hive’, but they demanded a work ethic that served kids like the Murrays, Joe Cotone and Chris Moran best, post adolescence. I don’t know everything there is to know about the Robinson brothers, just what people tell me and what I can remember from the wee 80s when we (the Robinsons, my teammates and the best scout back Denny ever coached) beat Mahopac in football for one of the few times in history, yet the brothers have always been a hot-button topic… especially within their own building where arrogance and pride have oft crossed paths. Nobody deserves an unceremonious release after 40 years of service, yet this is what they’ve sown, just or unjust, depending on whom you ask. Everyone close to the situation has an opinion and, yeah, they vary greatly.

“They are the sole reason that I became a physical education teacher,” said Brian Dalton, an All-American at Lakeland and Springfield College, who now teaches PE in the Bedford School system while coaching varsity lax at Somers. “There are things that they have done behind the scenes for countless kids at Lakeland that delve deep into family matters. They deserved a better fate than this, and this is coming from a lacrosse guy.”

But for all the similar accounts there are tales of woe; versions from former players who feel as though they were burned at the stake because Mike hit screaming groundballs from 10 yards away that might have caught them in the throat, or they were yanked in the middle of an inning and given an earful, or a pitch count that reached 140, or three days rest for starters in crunch time.

The blogs will light up like bon fires in the days ahead and the Robinsons will get skewered if it goes unchecked, because there are those among us who love to kick people when they are down, just before we pick them up and dust them off for the forgiveness they ultimately deserve.

I will be quick to forgive the brothers for some of the accusations that are out there because I know how much they’ve meant to many of those who should line up in their defense, but I get the feeling this is a done deal, whether folks line up in outrage or not.

The combination of teachers fearing their own shadow when it comes to their jobs, and most school boards ultimately being a set of deaf ears, is too much for the Robinsons to overcome. I will look more at their entire body of work, which I will always respect because I understand what it takes to coach highly competitive, high school athletics in the most vicarious country in the world.

Lakeland’s coaching staff — from field hockey to track and field and all points in between — has always been one of the most respected out there and the baseball program the brothers ran from the early ‘70s to 2012 is recognized as a Section 1 juggernaut (even with just three sectional championships to their credit). The line to replace them will form to the right with Assistant Coach Joe Knapp at the head of the line. Early indications point to a smooth transition with Knapp assuming the lead role, but, again, this is unconfirmed because most school districts would rather we speculate than get to the truth. Nobody likes to play nice in these prickly situations.

The brothers, with Denny serving as Athletic Director, have been at the top of the Lakeland food chain for four decades, despite the occasional dustup with angry parents and tuckered athletes. Yes, there were cries of overuse of pitchers and their aversion for coddling players, which has been bandied about for years. Those cries reached their crescendo last week, and, so… the brothers will likely step down meekly this week; doing so against their better judgment, in an effort to sustain their jobs and salvage what dignity they have in escrow.

And the haters shall have their day.