Robinson Heads West for Team USA Tryout
The Gamecock junior will participate in a three-day tryout, with spots on the senior national team and collegiate national team at stake
COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina volleyball junior Mikayla Robinson will compete this weekend for a chance to represent her country, as she will participate in a three-day tryout for the U.S. Women’s National Team in Colorado Springs, Colo. from Feb. 21-23. This will be the West Dundee, Ill. native’s first time competing for a spot on Team USA’s roster.
Placements on the U.S. Women’s National Team and U.S. Collegiate National Team programs are on the line, with 214 total athletes from 94 colleges in attendance. The tryouts are directed by U.S. Women’s National Team head coach Karch Kiraly and his staff, who are preparing for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
The tryouts are broken into sessions over the three days, Robinson will be in the opening wave of athletes, scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET on Friday. Fans can follow a live stream of the Friday tryout by clicking THIS LINK. Robinson will follow Friday with a morning and afternoon session on Saturday, and a final session Sunday morning.
Robinson is coming off a career year on the court for South Carolina, setting personal bests in every major statistic while earning All-SEC and All-Region honors and helping the Gamecocks earn back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time since 2001-02. The team also reached the second round of the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row, something that had not been achieved in the program’s previous 47 seasons.
Robinson finished second on the team with 277 kills while hitting .337; her hitting percentage ranked seventh in the SEC and 97th nationally. In the program’s rally-scoring era, her hitting percentage ranks fourth overall, but highest overall in the last decade (min. 450 attacks). On defense, the junior’s 132 total blocks (26 solo) are the second-most by any member of the program in the rally-scoring era and the 26 solo blocks rank second.
Still with her senior season to come, Robinson is the program’s rally-scoring-era leader for career solo blocks (66), and she ranks third for career block assists (286) and total blocks (352). Only eight other members of the program have surpassed 350 career blocks.
For more information on the weekend, follow THIS LINK. For updates as the weekend progresses, follow @USAVolleyball on Twitter.
