HERMOSA BEACH, California — It sounds terrible, to let you know the reality.
Eight hours a day in a fitness center in Beijing, China. A rustic you’ve by no means been to, on a contract you signed as a result of it was the lone give you had. Solely American in your crew. Not a lick of English spoken. However hey, not less than you understand your favourite Chinese language meals is orange hen! Not that it issues. Most hours of the day, waking and infrequently in any other case, are spent within the sports activities corridor. You eat there. Nap there. Work there.
It’s the kind of surroundings that may break a 22-year-old coming off among the finest particular person NCAA seasons within the nation. However Kelsey Robinson Cook dinner was not your typical 22-year-old. She isn’t your typical something.
She is, quite the opposite, the kind of athlete that loves these things. Lengthy days within the fitness center? Rep after rep after rep?
“Hundreds of reps,” she says on SANDCAST: Seashore Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter.
She hasn’t but skilled the soft lifetime of the Italian League. Hasn’t but performed for a coach in Puerto Rico whose solely rule is to not come into the fitness center with sand in your ft. Hasn’t been given the rundown of a correct contract negotiation, the place you possibly can ask for issues, restrict your hours, the place you possibly can “actually,” she says, “make it a phenomenal expertise.”
However her choice then is a uncooked magnificence, the sort you may see in a Rocky film. These lengthy and grinding hours within the fitness center, making the micro enhancements that solely she will be able to see and really feel. Perhaps her stat line will present it as an out of doors hitter on Beijing BAIC Motor. Perhaps not. However she is aware of. She’s at all times identified.
These reps will in the future be the distinction.
They at all times have been.
“I simply got here from a really rigorous childhood so far as sports activities go,” Robinson Cook dinner mentioned. “I performed at a membership that was very militaristic and demanding in quite a lot of methods and for me it was at all times a selection. My dad and mom by no means compelled it upon me, I at all times needed to be there. I’ve been a fitness center rat since I used to be slightly child. I used to be there from 3 to 11 and waking up at 5 to go to tournaments on the weekends. From the very starting of my profession professionally, I wasn’t capable of separate volleyball as my id and that’s who I used to be. I feel that zeal and work ethic have carried me a good distance.”
There have been a pair of paradoxical motifs all through Robinson Cook dinner’s life: An indomitable will to win, and a vexing dose of self-doubt that has made profitable an inevitability. The primary phrase she factors to when describing an 11-year profession laden with gold medals, historic firsts, and lavished with accolades? Luck. The second? Work.
“I attribute my profession to actually being fortunate,” she mentioned. “I work actually onerous, however generally it’s really simply someone who sees what you can be and chooses you. I owe quite a lot of that to Karch [Kiraly] as a result of he did that for me.”
There may be some fact that to realize one thing that can be remembered in historical past books, luck usually performs a job. However luck would have future its course by now. And although Robinson Cook dinner mentions that Kiraly, the pinnacle coach of the USA Nationwide Crew, took a flier on the surface hitter from Nebraska, it was no stroke of windfall that hers was a reputation he knew.
John Cook dinner made positive of that. Her coach at Nebraska — and now household after she married his nephew, Brian, whom she met after they had been each taking part in professionally in Italy — knew that Robinson Cook dinner has a present for a lot of issues. Self-promotion isn’t certainly one of them. He’d tried to get Robinson Cook dinner to play for him all 4 years at Nebraska. He solely had the possibility for one after she performed her first three seasons at Tennessee after which turned the Huge Ten participant of the yr as a senior.
“The rationale she advised me she didn’t come to Nebraska was as a result of she didn’t assume she may play right here,” Cook dinner advised Husker.com in Could of 2017.
It was directly a scarcity of religion in her skills and likewise, considerably paradoxically, an unbridled confidence in herself that led her to start her profession as an alternative at Tennessee, then an unproven program, a clean slate upon which Robinson Cook dinner may writer her personal legacy and that of the crew.
“I may see myself serving to form this system and it was vital to me to play as a freshman. I didn’t know if I’d have the chance to do this at Nebraska as a result of I wasn’t actually a giant time recruit,” she mentioned. “I had quite a lot of nice alternatives but it surely wasn’t like ‘She’s going to be every part.’ I needed that probability to develop and work onerous.”
Develop? Work onerous? She did that and extra. All-SEC as a freshman. Convention Participant of the Yr as a sophomore, the primary Volunteer to ever declare that honor. SEC chief in double-doubles as a junior. When issues started to go south in Knoxville and she or he tinkered with the notion of transferring, there have been no onerous emotions from John Cook dinner about being spurned the primary time round. She was adequate for him then. She was greater than adequate for his program now.
Even then, with a resume already getting prolonged, her going to Nebraska had little to do together with her aspirations in a fitness center. When Robinson Cook dinner was a senior in 2013, Volleyball TV was nonetheless a decade away from being constructed. She couldn’t pull up the Italian League on her cellphone, or stream Nations League matches on her laptop computer. The one notion {that a} path to taking part in professionally got here each 4 years, in the course of the Summer season Olympic Video games.
She was extra concerned about seaside.
“The one factor that caught out to me was Misty [May-Treanor] and Kerri [Walsh Jennings],” Robinson Cook dinner mentioned, referencing the pair who had simply received a 3rd consecutive gold medal on the London Olympics. “Once I bought to Nebraska, I nonetheless wasn’t in that mindset of considering I used to be going to go professional. I used to be considering I’m going to play seaside.”
There may be little doubting she would have been elite on the sand. However Robinson Cook dinner’s potential in a fitness center was apparent, confirmed, measurable. It was right here and now, making her a finalist for the Honda Award. And apart from: It was Could-Treanor herself who advisable that Robinson Cook dinner go indoors first, make some cash. The seaside would at all times be there. Cook dinner helped guarantee indoor can be, too. He positioned a name to Kiraly, informing him of Robinson Cook dinner’s expertise and work ethic. So no, it wasn’t luck in any respect, or Kiraly taking a blind probability on Robinson Cook dinner, that she discovered herself within the USA nationwide crew fitness center in the summertime of 2014.
Robinson Cook dinner earned that luck all on her personal.
“I advised Kelsey if she will be able to’t do it as an out of doors hitter, possibly you could be a libero,” Cook dinner mentioned. “So Kelsey went on the market in Could, participated within the tryouts and, in fact, she made the crew and stayed in this system.”
She made the crew, had her eyes opened to a world she was solely simply realizing existed: Life as knowledgeable volleyball participant. However as a result of she was so late to the scene, the one contract she was supplied was in Beijing. And since she was so new, a rookie’s rookie, she nonetheless had no concept what the lifetime of knowledgeable volleyball participant regarded like.
These lengthy days within the Beijing sports activities corridor, those that will flip many athletes to the seaside or an workplace again house, aren’t the norm, one thing she would discover out quickly sufficient. However they had been little slices of masochistic heaven to somebody like Robinson Cook dinner.
“I simply thought that is what it’s, that is how we do it,” she mentioned. “I’m simply going to point out up, work onerous.”
It’s these days in China that she credit as forming the spine of her sport as knowledgeable. Her enchancment was such that she made the USA roster and received a World Championship. She has since added three Nations League golds and two Olympic medals. Her proper arm was the fulcrum of a USA crew that, in 2021, claimed the primary Olympic gold within the nation’s historical past. Individually, she has laid declare to each accolade an out of doors hitter may need — MVP of the Italian League, Greatest Outdoors Hitter within the Champions League, Greatest Outdoors Hitter of the FIVB Grand Prix and the World Cup and the World Championship.
That “present up, work onerous” mentality has led her to success on golf equipment all over the place from China to Puerto Rico to Italy to Türkiye to Japan and again to China and Italy once more. It has molded the tradition inside the USA Nationwide Crew fitness center, the place she has been described by teammates and coaches as “fiery,” a “fireball,” and, amongst different descriptors of intense warmth, “slightly spark.”
“If you play with Kelsey, there’s little doubt that she goes to compete,” former libero Kayla Banwarth advised the Chicago Union-Tribune. “She goes to carry every part she’s bought.”
She does this as a result of, for Robinson Cook dinner, what can be the purpose of doing something much less?
And underneath the attention of Kiraly, what different selection does anybody within the USA fitness center have?
The ladies’s nationwide crew is as deep and proficient because it has ever been. There are dozens of supremely gifted ladies vying for simply 12 spots. A wholesome rigidity, iron sharpening iron, shaping the People into the No. 2 crew on the planet, behind solely Türikye. However rigidity nonetheless.
“The surroundings that we reside in could be very troublesome. You’re competing for a spot with a few of your finest mates and in 11 years I’ve seen a lot heartbreak,” Robinson Cook dinner mentioned. “Some days are good, some days are dangerous. There’s years the place you need to stop and you retain asking your self why do you need to do that, why do you retain displaying up? However what I’ve realized is it’s a must to perceive why you’re doing it. It could be completely different from individual to individual to particular person, however why am I moving into this fitness center? Why am I competing? Why am I selecting that? On the finish of the day, it’s one particular person’s selection. Our coach decides both you’re on this crew otherwise you’re not.
“I do know that I may need my coronary heart damaged however I’m OK with that as a result of I’m going to point out up for me and I’m going to compete with ardour and pleasure, these are the issues that fill me up. I’m OK that in the future it would break me. That’s one thing I attempt to instill in different folks. It’s a must to do it for you. In the end, you displaying up and your fullest self goes to infiltrate this crew the easiest way.
“In crew sports activities it may be onerous as a result of you will get wrapped up in we’re not assembly the usual, we’re not doing this properly, this particular person didn’t run that ball down, they’re not giving effort. The extra you get caught up in that stuff, you possibly can actually spiral and that simply takes you out of your personal efficiency. One thing I reside by day-after-day is that it begins with me. Not me saying you should try this or that was good, but it surely begins with me by way of how I compete, how I present up, how onerous I’m going for each level as a result of finally folks will get on my again and we’ll go collectively. That’s how I method day-after-day.”