In 1975, Reggie Robinson coached his first game in city youth basketball.
“I was only three years older than my players,” says the elder statesman with the Saginaw High Trojans.
How could that be? He was still a kid himself, only in Webber Middle’s eighth grade at the time. On Saturday mornings, following the Friday-night showcases at Saginaw High during the era of Coach Charlie Coles, he would bundle up in winter’s cold for the short walk from his South Side family’s home to Salina Elementary for the city youth league games. The tiny gym had been like his second home, and now he would return as a sort of adolescent honor alumnus.
His status at Salina was so solid that when the regular fifth/sixth grade coach was a no-show, school authorities asked young Reggie to fill in.
He recalls no further specific events of that Saturday, only that this was the beginning of his work with younger children.
He says his main challenge with his very first team was that four of the starters were left-handed. He adds, almost as an afterthought, that his Salina Stars went undefeated and captured the elementary city championship.
“I have never talked to my teams about winning,” he explains. “At that age, they already face enough pressure as it is.”
SHS coaches, spanning from the legendary Coles to current 12-year vet Julian Taylor, have remained close to Robinson, for his trustworthiness and for his accumulated expertise to prepare youngsters in the basic fundamentals, both in skills and in positive attitudes.
For the first time, Robinson has missed some of Saginaw High’s games this season. He is caring for his mother, Lizzie Robinson, who was a city school teacher for 38 years. His father, Steve N. Robinson, an accountant for General Motors, passed away five years ago.
Reggie joins the coaches on the SHS team bench because he began attending varsity practices during the 1980s, as part of his learning process.
“I want to translate the Trojan basketball language, similar drills, into the kids’ practices,” is his simple explanation.
His sessions run no longer than an hour and 45 minutes. Players begin with stretching, then move to ball-handling and shooting. Next, team offense and defense are learned in a half-court setting, with players switching positions at intervals so that they may absorb both aspects. A full-court scrimmage simulates game conditions, while building fitness and stamina.
Finally, classroom activity is reviewed at the close, with the rigid intensity we would expect from a school teacher’s son. This goes far beyond checking report cards at each semester break. Coach Robinson’s players are asked to deliver academic progress reports at each team practice session.
Working with the Saginaw High J.V. and varsity team also allows Reggie to devote individual attention for youngsters who show the most serious interest. His one-to-one pupils through the years have ranged from Anthony Roberson to Eugene Seals Jr., who both share his South Side roots but who could not be more different in styles of play, Fookie Seals as a frontcourt grinder and Roberson as a backcourt wizard.
“Looking back,” Seals says, “I think of Coach Robinson as giving all of us the proper instruction, in relation to our individual talents and skills. That’s what I strive to do in my own coaching and training.”
For his part, Robinson recalls his protégé as an inexperienced, gangly 9-year-old who was playing for his first team.
“Eugene was rough around the edges, to say the least,” Reggie notes. “I asked him to come to practice a half-hour early, so that we could work one-to-one together. Instead, he would show up an hour ahead, and so I had to move up my schedule so that he wouldn’t beat me there.”
Seals advanced to play for Coles at Miami (Ohio) University, while Roberson was a standout at the University of Florida who made the NBA, an amazing achievement for an athlete of his smaller physical stature.
A good number of Robinson’s products have entered coaching themselves, Seals and Taylor among them. Mike Thomas has achieved three state crowns after manning the point guard position for Saginaw High, graduating in 2001. The championships were at Kalamazoo Central in 2010 and ’11, and then at Grand Blanc High in 2021. The Grand Blanc Bobcats were runners-up in 2022, and Thomas now is at East Kentwood High, near K’Zoo.
“Reggie Robinson is a very inspiring person. He provided my foundation for both playing and coaching,” says Thomas, who played four seasons for Albion College and first entered coaching as an assistant.
He adds, “Some of our practice drills, starting with our warmups, are based on what I learned from Coach Robinson.”
Another area in which Robinson was ahead of his time was use of game film. He acquired a camcorder when the video machines first became popular.
“As early as second and third grades,” Mike says, “Coach introduced us to watching film immediately after our games, when we could learn from our mistakes.”
Title IX, a federal law for gender equity, opened the door for girls in basketball, starting during the 1980s and peaking with the 1996 Olympic women’s team (Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes and others), which led to formation of the WNBA.
Robinson was ahead of his time. His AAU teams did not stop with the “Pride Bad Boys Drug-Free Club.” He also organized the “Pride Lady Ballers.”
Jasmine Harris, Arthur Hill High Class of 2008, is the younger sister of Courey Jacobs, who was part of the Roberson/Seals AAU squad. She eventually earned a full athletic scholarship in basketball and track at Clark Atlanta University, an HBCU in Georgia, where she still resides.
“I didn’t have much confidence,” Jasmine says.
Reggie took one of his trademark creative approaches to boost her self-esteem. He suggested she was so good at shooting guard that she should consider switching to the point, which requires a wider skill set. This was a positive psyche move that blocked her from worrying about being the shooter, by making her think of taking a larger role instead.
“We would go back and forth on that,” Jasmine recalls. “He was my best coach ever.”
Jessie Drain, along with Julian Taylor, began under Robinson’s tutoring. They both advanced to Saginaw High’s Class of 1991.
Drain later recalls: “He would pick us up at home, those who needed rides, and take us to the practices. He was more than my first coach, fourth grade and fifth grade and beyond. He was like an older brother, and he still is today.”
Jessie took his high-flying, athletic game to play four years with the University of Houston and five more with the Harlem Globetrotters. Similar to Seals, he now adapts Robinson’s principles to his youth coaching, to the point where he invited Reggie to his family’s home in Orlando last summer to view his AAU team, which includes his own son, Terrance.
Lawrence Davis came along a few years later. The reason he became familiar with older stars like “Draino” was because Robinson would car-pool the South Side youngsters not only to their own practices and games at Salina School, but also to the Saginaw High battles against, often versus the powerhouses from Flint and from Pontiac, on occasion from Detroit..
“We all would pile into his car to the point where we were sitting on each other’s laps,” recalls Davis, who now resides in Seattle with his family.
“Then he would drive us to the tournament games, Those were the only times some of us had traveled out of town. And then on top of that, he would take us to eat. Even beyond the basketball, I remember the mentorship. He was like a father figure to us.”
But basketball still was the centerpiece.
“Back at Salina School, we would run the same drills as we would see at Saginaw High,” Davis adds. “Even our uniforms were black and gold. That was Coach Robinson.”
Coach Taylor guided the Trojans to their most recent state crown in 2012, his first season, and during the ensuing decade he has maintained the program’s traditional high standards.
“I can write a book on how Reg helped us with the game of life and with basketball,” Taylor says. ” As a coach, he gave us all the confidence in the world to be the best we could be. He never fussed or yelled at us, he kept his cool at all times.
“When I first played for Reg, I was a 10-year-old skinny kid with no confidence, I was only following along on an AAU trip with my cousins. While watching my cousin’s team get prepared for the game in the locker room, Reg asked how old I was and did I want to suit up for that game, which was the championship game. That moment forever changed my life! Although I didn’t play much in that game, it gave me confidence that I could play with anybody.”
Julian continues, “Fast forward to the following year, He handpicked eight of us to play for his AAU program. That year he really showed me how to be a hard worker and to be dedicated to the game. He took our team to the next level. That year we won the state championship and the national championship!”
In summary, “He is by far one of the best coaches in Saginaw history!! Things I learned from him, I still apply in coaching. He was one of the first people I reached out to when I got the head coaching job at SHS, and still do to this day.”
“Reggie Robinson was my first coach,” Drain says, “not only in learning how to play, but in learning about life.”
