KY WAS BORN four years after Jamie, a volleyball and basketball star who sometimes taunted Ky by parading in front of him in her Queensland gear when he failed to make the state’s teams. Ky was a name that first came to Mark in a dream. It won out over Tristan, which his mother favored.
As his training under Curran and McAfee ramped up, Ky saw some success as he became more consistent. Though he didn’t make any Queensland teams in 2017, Ky showed potential “even though he was not the most dedicated to training and would miss assigned runs all the time,” Curran said.
The coaches invited him to train with some older college-level runners on weekends and picked him up at 5:30 a.m. for the hour drive to Gold Coast to train with their group.
“I was basically thrown in there and told, ‘Hang on,’” Robinson said. “I’d basically be at the back of the pack every single workout, just trying to survive as long as I could. But by the end of that year, I was starting to win races.”
A turning point came on one of the most notorious courses in a country known for its brutal cross country. After repeatedly finishing one spot from berths in national championship races, Robinson finally advanced to his first under-18 nationals in cross country, at Maleny, a golf course with a hill that seems to ascend forever, and then get even steeper.
Robinson entered a minor race two weeks before nationals to get a feel for the course and was “smoked by random people,” he said. It was humbling and a huge blow to his newfound confidence.
His coaches advised a different approach for the championship: walk.
“It’s so steep, you won’t be losing that much time,” Ky was told. “Then sprint the downhill. You’ll gain so much time. They’ll all be exhausted.”
Robinson stuck to the plan even as runners passed him up the hill. But on the downhill, Robinson zoomed past so many he found himself finishing as the third Australian. His parents, watching from the hillside, were left in awe. Robinson went from never making the national meet to coming in the top three in one year.
“We told you that you had talent,” the coaches reminded him. Finally, Ky was able to see it too.
Brisbane native Patrick Thygesen, now a senior runner at Providence, was among Ky’s rivals. Thygesen said he probably raced Robinson as many as 20 times a year.
“At 15 or 16, I was better than him, I trained better than him,” Thygesen said. “But even then, he didn’t back down from anyone. At one point, in a school championship, he just took off. I thought he might come back to me, but he kept getting farther and farther away. I thought, Where’s this coming from? He’s just gone to another level now.”
Robinson began to mature physically and catch up in size to others his age, but it was more than that.
“Ky just had this massive aerobic engine,” Curran said. “I wouldn’t want to put any pressure on a kid that age and tell them they’re going to be great, but I definitely noticed a big change that year and he began to dominate.”
Since Curran and McAfee had been through the American college system, they encouraged Ky to seek out its opportunities. Running in Australia doesn’t offer much support after high school, Curran said, so they tried to educate him on his options.
The Robinsons, however, had no understanding of the U.S. college system – the best schools, admissions requirements, athletic possibilities. Churchie, however, had a partnership with the Aussie Athletes Agency, a company that seeks to find American college opportunities for Australian athletes. It’s run by David Hodge, a Brisbane native and former Stanford men’s tennis assistant coach known to Mark Robinson through tennis circles.
Ky sent a simple Web site inquiry to Hodge’s agency, leading to a meeting between Hodge and Susan at a café near Churchie and setting in motion a process that led Ky to Stanford. Hodge knew the Stanford recruitment process intimately and provided the boost that allowed Robinson to establish his goals with Stanford in the forefront.
“It was clear based on Ky’s priorities and goals that Stanford would be a perfect environment for him,” Hodge said.
Robinson said he reached out to the Stanford coaching staff through e-mail and was told he didn’t meet their standards. Robinson was discouraged, but his hopes were renewed when he was alerted to a coaching change at Stanford, and a connection with new men’s distance coach Ricardo Santos.
McAfee had an Aussie friend, Chartt Miller, who ran for Santos at Iona. When McAfee sought to transfer from Boise State, he considered Iona and visited Santos, though McAfee ultimately was not released from Boise State and returned to Australia. But the connection was established and McAfee became an advocate on Ky’s second attempt to reach out to Stanford.
“I remember we were up at Bend, Oregon, for our training camp when Louis emailed me about Ky,” Santos said. “I’m not going to say no to anyone, especially if it’s someone I know who is vouching for a person. Louis has been in the U.S. He knows what it means and what it takes.”
Robinson again was informed he hadn’t reached Stanford’s time standards. However, Santos urged Ky to keep in touch and to alert him to any upcoming races.
Robinson felt he had to do the persuading rather than the other way around with Stanford. The more Robinson and Santos communicated, the more Santos was impressed.
Robinson did indeed reach Stanford standards on the track, though not by much. But the process already was in motion.
“He sent me a video of him running,” Santos said. “He won easily. Even though there was no one else there, he pushed himself. I liked that. He was a really smooth runner and very versatile, with a pretty decent 1,500 all the up to 5,000. I liked that too.”
Curran and McAfee told Santos that Ky was undertrained. Ky’s times were “decent,” Santos said, but it was Robinson’s potential that was most intriguing.
“I liked his personality and I just thought he’d be a good fit,” Santos said. “It got to the point where, in talking to Coach Clark, that this was someone that we should take a chance on.”
J.J. Clark, Stanford’s Franklin P. Johnson Director of Track and Field and Cross Country, agreed.
“I thought we were getting someone who could eventually make it to NCAA’s,” Santos said. But when he finished sixth in the 3,000 steeplechase at the 2021 NCAA Championships in a school-record 8:32.01 as a freshman … “That’s when we knew, there was more there than we thought.”
