He’s not first team all-district in high school, but he reaches the Super Bowl?
A’Shawn Robinson was a five-star recruit who committed to Texas, played at Alabama, is currently preparing to play in the Super Bowl for the L.A. Rams — and was not even first team all-district in Fort Worth.
Of the many feats Robinson has amassed in his football career, the fact that he wasn’t “good enough” to be first team all-district in his high school senior year at Arlington Heights may always remain the most impressively absurd.
When he was in the game, Robinson was that guy who always had all eyes on him. He was The Man, even as a kid.
And yet, even though he was the best player in District 7-4A, he was second team.
“I’d say it was political,” said then Heights coach Todd Whitten in a phone interview. Whitten is now the head coach at Tarleton State. “The [other teams] probably didn’t care for him one way or the other.”
Some of the district coaches who participated in the voting weren’t crazy about the way Robinson played, nor his reputation for only showing sporadic interest in playing.
“I don’t think it helped we won two district games that year,” said Heights defensive coordinator Curtis James. “I remember when I found out that he wasn’t all-district. It sounds crazy that A’Shawn Robinson was second team.”
Yes.
Yes, it does.
Before Robinson became a star at Alabama, a second-round pick of the Detroit Lions and now a starter with the L.A. Rams, he was a Heights kid who wanted to play basketball.
But he also knew that football was his shot.
“He was fun to coach, but I don’t think he had any idea how good he was,” Whitten said. “He was naive about it. Basketball was his first love, and that’s what he was always doing.
“I’d get college coaches coming around wanting to recruit him, and he was never there because he was always playing basketball. He was traveling on AAU teams, in tournaments, always playing.”
Coming out of Heights as a senior in 2013, Robinson was listed as a 6-foot-5, 304 pound defensive tackle, but somewhere in that NFL frame was an aspiring NBA point guard.
He could actually do it.
Robinson exists like some Greek myth around the Heights campus.
“I saw him play a game once where he posted this kid up a few feet from the basket,” said current Heights coach Larry Petite, who played his high school ball at Heights a few years before Robinson arrived. “He gets the ball, one dribble, drop step into the lane, and dunks it.”
Despite his size, Robinson was so athletic he could actually play point guard.
“We had a playoff game against Everman, and he takes over,” James said. “He was, ‘Give me the ball.’ If he doesn’t do that, we don’t go to state.”
Heights reached the state tournament in Robinson’s junior and senior years.
Not long after he left Arlington Heights and went to Alabama, he started to figure it out. He was no longer a kid who loved basketball, but played football because he knew that was his ticket.
That naive kid was gone. As much as he loved basketball, he was sitting on a legitimate chance to reach the NFL.
“He came back after his freshman year and you could just see the maturity,” James said.
Now in his sixth NFL season, Robinson started 14 games for the Rams this season.
Robinson’s mother lives in Fort Worth, so A’Shawn often returns to town and when he does he often visits his old high school.
This week, James and Petite reached out to a collection of his former teammates, classmates and coaches to make a video for him as he prepares for the Super Bowl.
The school enlisted the help of the spirit squad and students who all went to the Heights’ gym to film a short video wishing him well on Sunday.
Even though he’s a basketball player at heart, A’Shawn Robinson has done OK in football considering he was second team all-district.
This story was originally published February 12, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
