Washington Twp. coach Robinson brings passion to new position

It was the worst experience of Lamont Robinson's life.

It might have been the best as well.

The one-car accident in May 2004 during Robinson's junior year at Salem High School nearly claimed his life, resulting in two broken bones in his neck and another in his back plus a dislocated eye socket and facial cuts requiring 60 stitches.

To this day, 13 years later, Robinson believes he was never again the same from a physical standpoint and that his athletic career can be neatly divided. He was one football player before he swerved his car to avoid a dog on Telegraph Road in Alloway, crashed through a chain-link fence, was ejected from the vehicle and landed in a lake. He was another football player after.

"I tell people, if I didn't get into the accident, I think there's a greater chance I could have made it to the NFL, knowing it was still slim," Robinson said. "But what I lost from an athletic standpoint, what I lost from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint, from a character standpoint, from a man's standpoint, I gained that much and more."

That unique perspective is what the 30-year-old Robinson brings to his new role as head football coach at Washington Township, one of South Jersey's premier programs.

That and a seemingly bottomless well of energy and enthusiasm.

"He honestly sets the energy level at every practice," Washington Township senior lineman Kenny Cockerill said. "He's always so excited."

Said Washington Township senior two-way back Colin Meintel, "He is non-stop, high energy. Always going. We love it."

To watch Robinson at a preseason scrimmage is to see a man who has found his "passion and purpose." He is in near-constant motion, cheering his players' successes, correcting their mistakes, pushing and prodding them to dig deeper, to work harder for each other.

Practices are the same way.

"I've never seen a team work harder than he's made this team work," veteran Washington Township athletic director Kevin Murphy said.

Robinson, who will teach history at the large school in Gloucester County, said he can bring back the glory days to Washington Township football. The Minutemen made eight appearances in the South Jersey Group 4 finals from 1987-2004 but haven't won a playoff game since 2011.

But the new coach wants to do a lot more win.

"I want to live a life of service, helping our youth," Robinson said. " Being a football coach, you get to wear many hats. You're a coach. You're a counselor. You're a father figure, an uncle.

"I'm helping young men hopefully understand the importance of academics, using the game of football as a tool to raise camaraderie and school spirit, excitement in the community. And then to just bring young men together.

"Do something positive. Give the town something to be proud and happy about and give these guys some memories and help them develop into great young men."

Robinson was hired by Washington Township after two seasons as an assistant coach at Millville. He was the team's defensive coordinator in 2016, when the Thunderbolts captured the South Jersey Group 5 title.

"You can't replace a Lamont Robinson," Millville coach Dennis Thomas said. "But Washington Township picked the right man for the job. He's going to work tireless hours."

Millville senior two-way back Clayton Scott, an all-South Jersey selection in 2016 who has 11 Division I scholarship offers, said Robinson was key to the team's championship last season.

"That's my guy. We were like Batman and Robin," Scott said. "He's going to do great at Washington Township."

Robinson played for Bob Stoops at the University of Oklahoma although his participation was limited. He red-shirted as a freshman in 2005 then saw action in just 20 games over the next three seasons, although he was a member of three Big 12 championship teams, including the 2009 squad that reached the national title game against Florida.

"Many humbling days out there," Robinson said of his time in Norman, Okla. "Lessons. The biggest thing, when I talk to the guys [his current players], is for them to understand developing a winning attitude, a winning culture, a championship culture.

"It's being part of something bigger than yourself. Everybody on team has a place, and whether you're the best player on the team — an Adrian Peterson, a DeMarco Murray — or the guy who is on the scout team, there is a place within the locker room and within that team for you."

Robinson graduated from Oklahoma was dual degrees in African-American studies and Religious studies. He had a 4.2 grade-point average.

Reflecting on his academic career, Robinson invariably mentions the accident that changed his life.

"I'll tell you, if I hadn't gone through that situation I don't think I would have graduated from the University of Oklahoma," Robinson said. "Just some of the adversity I faced there and having the perseverance to see it though to end."

Robinson was a star scholastic athlete in the spring of 2004, a 17-year-old with the world on a string. He had just returned from the Elite College Combine, where he made a big impression on coaches from some of the country's top college programs.

In fact, when Robinson returned home from the hospital, the offer from Oklahoma would be in the mail.

"That was waiting for me," Robinson said.

The accident altered everything. He was rescued by a by-stander who saw the crash and performed life-saving procedures. He was rushed to Christiana Hospital in New Castle, Del., where a few days later doctors told him his football career was over.

"They told me I would never play again," Robinson said. "I broke down. I was crying. Things had just started rolling. I was 17. Things were just starting to happen."

After spinal-fusion surgery and extensive rehabilitation — some which, he now admits, he did on his own against doctor's orders — Robinson defied the odds and returned to play the final six games of his senior season at Salem.

He played well enough that Oklahoma honored its scholarship offer. But he believes he's never been quite the same — for worse as an athlete, for better as a man.

"I was in a situation where the odds were stacked against me," Robinson said. "I had to lean and rely on my faith and really trust that there is a greater plan, there is more than man can say.

"Now I know there isn't a situation that I can go through in football. There isn't a situation I can go through in the classroom, that I can go through in life, that is going to hit me like that moment where here I am, a high school athlete, Division I offers coming in, and then it being gone like that.

"The fragility of life, the fragility of situations and not taking things for granted. It was great in the sense that I realized, 'If I ain't dead, there's an opportunity to go make some things happen.'"

Winslow Township football coach and athletic director Kemp Carr was Salem's defensive coordinator early in Robinson's playing career and told the young athlete that coaching was in his future.

"He didn't believe me," Carr said. "But I could tell the way he watched film, the way he was in the classroom, his leadership qualities."

Carr remembers the accident "like yesterday." He said Robinson was blessed with a second chance at life, and he embraced it.

"He was in a life-threatening situation," Carr said. "He used it to find his purpose and his calling and that's to help young men."

Robinson is convinced he emerged from that lake a lesser football player and a greater person.

He said he would take that deal every day of the week, and twice on Sundays.

And he brings that perspective — plus all that energy — to the weight room and the classroom and the football field.

"This is a labor, a grind, but outside playing, outside my kids and my family, I feel like I'm walking in my passion and purpose here," Robinson said. "You can see the impact you have on kids. You can feel the love they reciprocate.

"I'm telling you. There's no better feeling in the world."