Robinson influenced many students-athletes

Prep Scene

“Hey, you came across the river,” he said smiling, I recall. “There must be something important going on over here.” So said former Minneapolis North High School football coach Richard Robinson to me, before the Polars mixed it up with a city conference opponent during the 1989 season. “I’m glad you could make it.”

Robinson, a Hall of Fame coach, retired educator, and athletic director in the Minneapolis Public Schools, passed away this month at the age of 87. That was how he would greet me—with a smile on his face—every time I came to North to cover an athletic event.

You see, I graduated from St. Paul Central High School in 1983, and Robison always wanted to remind us [myself and my father Kwame McDonald] that there were student-athletes in Minneapolis making their mark as well.

Robinson, who was the football coach at Minneapolis Central from 1972, until the school closed in 1982, had North on a magical ride during the 1989 season.

Behind Brett Buckner, La Mar Elliot, Jonas Dixon, Brian Scheppard, and Jonathan Smith, North lost to Edison 32-0 for the City Conference championship. Robinson was quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune saying “They wanted it more than we did. We choked. It’s time to regroup.”

“That was Coach,” said Buckner, who was a senior quarterback for that Polars team and is currently executive director of Friends of the Children-Twin Cities. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Metropolitan State University.

“He was a great mentor and role model,” Buckner continued. “Being part of that team and being coached by him had a big impact on my life.” 

Robinson retired as North’s coach after the 1990 season and remained the school’s athletic director until his retirement in 1998.

Beginning in 1982 after Central was closed, Robinson coached the likes of Mark Eubanks, Jerry Upton, Jeff Robinson, Jeff Williams, Ron Buck, Lawrence Coleman, and Mike Favor, while at North. 

By the time my family relocated to Saint Paul from New Brunswick, NJ, when I was entering seventh grade in 1977, Robinson was already established as one of the state’s top high school football coaches at Central, a job he began in 1972.

He went on to coach such players as Charlie Walker, Rickie Davis, Wayne Whitmore, Calvin Anderson, James Holmes Jr., Russell Gary, Rodney Lewis, Jeff Byrd, Willie Roller, Charles Rucker, Tim Robinson, David Thompson, and Peter Najarian to name a few, leading the Pioneers to a City Conference championship in 1980.

During a phone call in which Rucker, a 1980 Central graduate, conveyed the passing of Robinson, he acknowledged the many lives the man impacted along with his induction into the Minnesota Football Coaches Association (MFCA) Hall of Fame Class of 2021. 

“It was good to finally see Coach being honored,” Rucker said. “But it was long overdue. He [Robinson] definitely had an impact on my life as well as others’.”

Rucker is currently president of the Minneapolis African American Firefighter Association after starring at cornerback for Golden Valley Lutheran Community College and the University of Nebraska.

Robinson also had a profound impact on students as a social studies teacher, as pointed out by Henry Lake, 1991 North graduate and Morehouse College alum, radio talk show host for WCCO and founder of the Lake Media Group.

“You knew what expectations were when you entered Mr. Robison’s classroom,” he said. “You were going to learn, take the knowledge you acquired, and move forward in the world.”

Last Friday afternoon, I attended Robinson’s viewing at Park Avenue Church in Minneapolis, where hundreds gathered to honor a great man. I seemed to hear Robinson’s voice upon entering the church:

“Hey, you came across the river. There must be something important going on over here.”  

There certainly was.