Santa Cruz native Kelsey Robinson Cook helps US women’s volleyball team wins 5-set thriller

PARIS — Two points stood between unmitigated disappointment and a thread of hope for Team USA women’s volleyball Wednesday night in its match against Serbia. Win the points, and the hope of winning a medal at the Paris Olympics survived. Lose them, and the team likely wouldn’t even advance out of pool play, much less defend its one and only gold medal.

The players gathered in a tight huddle on the court, arms wrapped over one another’s backs, for a brief confab. Then Kelsey Robinson Cook leaned in. As a cyclone of cheers swirled around them, she spoke a few words of hard-earned wisdom into the circle.

“Kelsey was saying just we’ve got to slow everything down, play our game,” said Avery Skinner, 25, who is making her Olympic debut. “First touch slow. Second touch slow. And then we just rip it.”

As Robinson Cook begins her third Olympics, she’s finding herself tasked with a somewhat different role. In past Games, the newly minted Santa Cruz resident would be the one called upon to rip it. So far in Paris, she’s more often been asked to keep it together. And with the U.S. going to five sets in its first two matches of pool play — an opening loss against China and a win over Serbia — that has been no insignificant assignment.

The second youngest on the United States’ team during her Olympic debut in 2016, Robinson Cook, 32, is now the second oldest. Only four-time Olympian Jordan Larson, 37, is older. They, along with 27-year-old Jordan Poulter (who will wear the gold captain’s bar on the court), have been anointed team captains. Or, as coach Karch Kiraly calls them, “the leadership council.”

“These three were very clearly chosen by their teammates as the leaders and captains of this team,” Kiraly said. “And I can’t think of better hands that the team could be in.”

The duties of the leadership council, Kiraly said, include checking in on teammates’ mental and physical health and hearing out any issues, complaints or general feedback they may have. They basically serve as liaisons between the staff and the players.

It’s a natural post for Robinson Cook, who has never shied from the role of team leader. Yet she’s likely aware that while pep talks can help, a good play — like the key dig she made on Serbian power hitter Tijana Boskovic during those final points of the USA’s 17-15 fifth-set win — can be equally impactful.

“We view it more as a democracy, I guess,” she said. “And I think we all take that responsibility and hold it very dear. But I think coming into my third Olympics, it’s really about emptying the tank and giving everything I have to this program and to these women, and I feel like we all feel the same way.”

Robinson Cook’s talk about “emptying the tank” makes it sound like she will retire after the Paris Games. She has not said whether she will seek to play in a fourth Olympics, but she has made it clear she still has plenty of volleyball in her. She just came off of winning back-to-back Italian League and Italian Cup championships with Italian club Imoco Volley alongside USA teammate Katheryn Plummer. Plus, she has been selected as one of the founding players of the League One Volleyball league.

That opportunity has reenergized her, she said. For the past decade, Robinson Cook has been living nine months per year abroad while playing for various international clubs. However LOVB, which begins its inaugural season next January, is based in the U.S.

Eventually, though, Robinson Cook will decide she doesn’t want to dink, dig and rip anymore. When that day comes, she knows where she wants to be: Santa Cruz.

“The first time I brought Kelsey to Santa Cruz,” her husband, Brian Cook, said, “she was like, ‘This is where I want to be forever.’”

She married the right person, then. Cook grew up in Santa Cruz, a member of one of the most volleyball-centric families in a volleyball-crazed town. He starred for Soquel High, collecting three MVP awards, and at Stanford before turning pro. His older sister, Karissa, collected her own stash of MVP awards at Harbor before setting for Stanford and winning a stop on the AVP beach volleyball tour. Most of the rest of his family, including his uncle and mother, either played or work around the sport.

Cook has first-hand knowledge of how lonely playing for a foreign club can be. So,  it didn’t take much for Robinson Cook to convince him to travel with her once he wrapped up his own pro career just before the pandemic. He continues to do that even though the couple bought Cook’s childhood home in Santa Cruz in 2021.

His support, Robinson Cook said, has factored strongly into her longevity in the sport.

“When your partner and his family, his support system, also supports everything that you do?” she said. “It just makes it so easy.”

That, in turn, helps Robinson support her teammates.

Eight of the 12 women on the roster have gold medals from the U.S.’s historic victory in Tokyo. Three years is a long time to hold onto momentum, though, and dynamics and bodies change. As a result the Americans entered the Paris Olympics in less than ideal form. And on Wednesday, the team got another chink in its armor when it announced an injury to its starting setter, Lauren Carlini. She was replaced for the match against Serbia by Micha Hancock.

“We’ve had some ups and downs this season, both in results and in health,” Kiraly said, “but I think things are coming together at the perfect time.”

If the U.S. finds itself in contention for a medal, Robinson Cook’s level head and sage advice may be a key reason why.

“Looking in her eyes, I have so much trust in her,” Skinner said. “And it gives me a lot of comfort having her next to me on the court.”

It might also be because she can flat-out rip.