Tony Robinson sat in a white folding chair, bent at his waist, elbows on his knees. He glanced around the State Fair Arena locker room, silent but for sniffles and sobs.

During a coaching career that spans nearly five decades, he has always been a straight shooter, a no-nonsense coach, and Monday afternoon, he told his girls basketball players from Durant High School exactly what he thought.

“I wanted to win for Will,” he said.

Everyone in that locker room did.

Heavens, anyone at the Oklahoma high school state basketball tournament who didn’t have a tie to El Reno , Durant's opponent in the Class 5A quarterfinals , wanted that, too.

On Christmas Eve, Durant head coach Will Robinson was killed when the family’s vehicle hydroplaned during heavy rain, went into a flooded drainage ditch and was swept away. His wife, Kristen, along with sons Carson and Cade and daughter Ellie made it out of the vehicle and out of the water.

Coach Rob and his daughter Clara didn’t.

He was 36.

She was only 8.

Their deaths hit like a sledgehammer in Durant. Coach Rob had grown up in the town only 15 minutes north of the Red River, played high school ball there, then stayed to play college ball at Southeastern Oklahoma State where his dad was the head coach. He returned to coach Durant’s girls basketball team in 2018.

The first few years were rough. One win. Five wins. Two wins.

But then three years ago, Durant turned a corner with a winning record. The next year, Coach Rob convinced his dad to join his coaching staff as an assistant.

Papa Rob, as the Durant players came to call him, spent much of his career at Southeastern, but he coached high school ball at Coalgate, Tuttle, Chickasha and Norman. He led the boys basketball team at Norman High to a state championship in 1990. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2007.

Still, he learned from his son.

“I’m a real intense coach,” Papa Rob said, something that anyone who saw him coach those Norman teams back in the day would agree with. “I learned from him that you don’t have to get after your kids, so I’ve calmed my coaching down a lot.

“I’ve said that’s the best two and a half years of my coaching career, watching him grow and become a really good coach.”

He thought he’d have many more years on his son’s staff.

Then came the accident.

Carson, a sophomore, helped to get Kristen and younger brother, Cade, out of the rushing water. Will was trying to get both of his little girls to safety.

“He had both of them,” Papa Rob said. “He got the littlest one up on the bank, and he lost the other one and went after her. Neither one of them made it.”

He paused.

“Something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

The entire community rallied around the family, raising money and bringing food and doing whatever they could to show their love. A GoFundMe raised over $40,000 for the Robinsons .

The joint memorial service for Coach Rob and Clara was held at the gym at Durant High School, and still, the place was packed.

As generous and lovely as all of that was, the grief the family felt was unrelenting.

“After the accident, I didn’t want to coach anymore,” Papa Rob said.

That wasn’t acceptable to the players. They wanted him to take over and coach the team.

“He knows everything about us,” sophomore Ella Sorrels said. “He has been with us since (we) have been here, and he knows exactly what kind of players we are and how to help us.”

They decided he needed to know how important he was to them, so they went to his house to tell him how they felt.

“I can’t do it,” Papa Rob thought at first.

But then he quickly realized something.

“That’s what Will would want.”

Papa Rob said yes and hasn’t regretted it.

That doesn’t mean there haven’t been tough moments for him and his players. Just walking into the gym and onto the court was difficult in the days after the accident.

The first few games were rough, too. Before tipoff, Papa Rob would go into the locker room and find every player in tears.

“You can’t do this,” he told them.

But he knew exactly what they were feeling. How badly they were hurting.

He also knew they were helping him.

“When you walk on a gym floor, you forget about everything, and you’re just totally focused on getting the team better,” he said. “So you’ve got two hours a night thinking only of basketball.

“And then those girls’ energy level, when I would walk off the court after practice, it would carry with me, so that evening I just felt a lot better.”

He shook his head.

“They pretty much saved me.”

The feeling was mutual.

“He told us that he didn’t think he could make it and just seeing us in the gym and just being able to be with us, it has helped him survive,” Sorrels said. “And it’s honestly helped us survive, too.”

Still, as good a match as Papa Rob and the players felt like they were, no one could have imagined what would come of this season. At the time of the accident, Durant was 4-4, so the idea of making the state tournament and getting back for the first time since 2009 seemed a bit far-fetched.

But then Durant won its first game back. Then its next game. Then another.

The wave of success seemed unlikely. Durant has only one senior, Rachel Cordell, in the starting lineup, and four of the five starters are listed at 5-foot-7 or below. To complicate matters more, Papa Rob says the team isn’t all that athletic either.

But somehow, this inexperienced, small, not-super-athletic team won 10 of its last 12 regular-season games and earned a chance to host regionals for the first time in 17 years. A regional championship left them only one game from state.

Last Friday, Durant punched its ticket with a win over Pryor.

Sunday, when the team got a police escort out of Durant on its way to Oklahoma City, people lined the streets. They were along First Street, then up Main Street.

“All the way,” Papa Rob marveled. “A mile and a half.”

Then on Monday, a bunch of those folks made the trek north for the game. Three buses of students. Thousands more by car. Many wore shirts with big W’s on the front for Will Robinson.

His son Carson, who wore his dad’s jersey in warmups the first game after he died, sat on Durant’s bench wearing his dad’s letter jacket.

“I might add my patches to it,” Carson said.

Even though the outcome of the game wasn’t what anyone from Durant wanted — El Reno, the defending state champ, won 42-25 — it was hard to argue the outcome of the season.

Sure, some might say Durant deserved a fairytale ending, but talk to those inside that locker room, and they’ll tell you there was magic in this season.

“I’m a decent coach. They’re pretty good players,” Papa Rob said. “But there’s a greater presence here allowing me and my family to heal and allowing the girls and their families to heal.

“I wish Will was here, but he is.”

He reminded the players of that in the locker room after the game. Yes, it was OK to be disappointed in the loss. Sure, it was understandable to be sad about the season ending.

But no one could take away what they accomplished.

“We did things we shouldn’t be able to do,” Papa Rob said in the quiet of that locker room.

Things that went way beyond winning basketball games.

Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at [email protected]. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.