Katie Robinson Hired as New Assistant Coach for Stanford Women
Stanford has hired former Northwestern head coach Katie Robinson as the women’s program’s new associate head coach coach. Robinson replaces Tracy Slusser, who had worked with Greg Meehan for all 11 years of Meehan’s tenure in Palo Alto before stepping down last month. Robinson posted a lengthy statement to Instagram explaining her decision, and Meehan confirmed Robinson’s hiring to Swimming World.
Robinson has been the head coach of the Northwestern women and men’s combined program for the last three seasons after she was the associate head coach in Evanston, Ill., for the two years before that.
“My leaving Northwestern has nothing to do with the insane amount of belief I have in the program. Let is be clearly stated tht Northwestern’s best days are head! I love the heck out of our student-athletes – and future ‘Cats – and I will forever have NU in my heart, wishing them well. They have made this decision absolutely heart-wrenching and to say I’m grateful for them would be a massive understatement,” Robinson’s post said in part.
She added, “This change is a personal one for me. There are few moments in life we, as coaches, get to lift our head out of the trenches we have been doggedly digging to reflect on where we came, and more importantly to see the direction we are heading. I look back at my career thus far and see where my fierce competitive nature has led me to keep stepping up the coaching ladder to prove it can be done. While I have no doubt in my ability to carry on the path I set out to accomplish, I owe it to myself to pick a path that is more congruent with my overall fulfillment in life. Just like the saying goes, ‘Happy swimmers are fast swimmers,’ the same can apply to coaches too.”
This season, Northwestern’s women placed sixth out of 12 teams at the Big Ten Championships while the men finished seventh out of eight teams. Prior to Northwestern, Robinson spent five seasons as the head women’s coach at Tulane, and she was also an assistant coach at Rutgers and Virginia. Her first-ever college coaching job came at the University of Pacific, where she was a grad assistant under then-head coach Meehan. Robinson competed collegiately at the University of Texas from 2003 to 2007, and she was a multi-time Big 12 champion in the 200 fly.
Northwestern Athletics acknowledged Robinson’s departure in a statement posted to Twitter. The statement said, “Katie Robinson unquestionably advanced Northwestern Swimming and Diving as the leader of both our men’s and women’s teams. Her commitment to our student-athletes in and out of the pool was obvious, and we wish her the best moving forward.”
Robinson now joins one of the most successful swimming program in the country. Under Meehan’s leadership, Stanford won three consecutive NCAA team titles in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and the team placed third each of the last two seasons.
Robinson concluded her own post by looking forward to working with Meehan and the future at Stanford: “I deeply respect his clarity of leadership, integrity, athlete advocacy and internal drive to be great. I am confident partnering with him at Stanford will bring out the best in both of us and the incredible women on the team. I simply cannot wait to see what the future holds.”
Welcome to the farm Katie! 🌲