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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

Look on the backpacks of many of the Pelham Panthers volleyball players, and they’ll have a specific button on them: a picture of coach Perry Robinson’s face with just one word underneath: legend.

Ask anybody around the Pelham High School campus or throughout the volleyball community in Alabama, and they will all agree with that assessment. Over the years, Robinson has built Pelham’s volleyball program into a perennial powerhouse where success is the standard.

There are only a few things left in the game that Robinson hasn’t won, but it’s time for him to win one of those missing honors: for the first time in his illustrious career, Perry Robinson is the Shelby County Coach of the Year.

Robinson entered the season off of a disappointing loss in regionals where the Panthers came just a few points away from making it back to state.

He knew he had as solid of a returning core of offensive players as anyone in outsides Camryn McMinn and Londyn Wynn and setter Kylee Hester. However, while the individual pieces for success were there, they still had to learn how play even better as a team.

“The goal is for this team to buy in, to come in every day and work to get better,” Robinson said before the season. “If we can do that, everything else will take care of itself.”

They did just that, and in the end, just about everything did take care of itself.

The Panthers went on an undefeated run through the regular season of area play, continuing an astounding record in area play as Robinson’s Pelham teams have dropped just one regular season area match since 2019.

As a result, the Panthers entered the playoffs as one of the top teams in the state. However, that was when the real challenges began.

After beating Chelsea twice in the regular season, Pelham came up just short in a five-set reverse sweep in the area title game. Once they got to super regionals, they needed to overcome a 2-1 deficit to No. 2 Saraland and a first-set loss to Northridge to advance back to state.

From there though, the Panthers put together an incredible run for the history books, downing Gulf Shores to reach the region title game before sweeping away Jasper and Gulf Shores in Birmingham to make it to the Class 6A state championship.

Robinson saw making the state title game as one of the toughest feats in all of Alabama with how loaded the field in Class 6A was.

“I was just talking to my staff, you get to the state title in 6A this year, 6A’s been incredibly hard all year,” Robinson said after the semifinal win over Gulf Shores. “Just super excited for the players. They’re doing what we’re asked, they continue to get better every day, including yesterday in practice, they were working on stuff, so I just love it. It’s very exciting.”

Despite the challenges, Pelham showed its resilience time and time again, resilience that could only be coached.

That resilience, among other traits, was not just built this year, but for many years prior as Robinson worked with his group to build them into the players and young women they now are.

That held especially true for the senior class like McMinn, Wynn, Hester and other mainstays like Kamryn Rouveyrol, Addison Knight, Juliana Bitas, Kendall Washington, Caroline Hamby, Madison Swinford and Brenna Vickery.

Many of those players have been together dating back to middle school, building chemistry over the years to culminate in a historic season.

Robinson has been there through many of the highs and lows, guiding the Class of 2025 along in their development to get to a point where they could represent Pelham on the state’s biggest stage.

“It’s been a lot of fun to get them to this point,” Robinson said after the state title game. “Wish we could have played a little better, but when we reflect on this, we’re going to be proud of this accomplishment. We represented our community well, they represent their community well, big following for them and it’s just been so much fun to be around them.”

Coach of the Year was by no means an easy decision. Two coaches with deep ties made their own cases in Jamie Gill and Sydni Brown, Gill leading Chelsea to area and regional titles en route to their first state tournament since 2019 and one of her former players at Coosa Valley in Brown winning a second-straight AISA Class A state title with the Rebels.

Chris Camper also made an immediate mark on Briarwood Christian, taking the Lions to an area title and the second round of the Class 5A super regionals to face a tough Montgomery Catholic team in what was widely expected to be a rebuilding year with just one senior on the roster.

However, Robinson’s years of work in building the Panthers program combined with his steady hand in bringing this year’s team together and pushing them past challenges to historic heights sealed his status as Class 6A Coach of the Year, Shelby County Coach of the Year, and yes, legend.