She’s leading trophy bid

What can be said about Jenna Robinson that hasn’t been said already?

Great athlete in volleyball and track, tops in her class academically, the third in her family to be named St. Maries Junior Miss.

Fill in the superlative.

The bottom line is that Robinson is a leader.

Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what she’s doing this season for the Lumberjacks, who sit atop the Intermountain League standings.

The senior outside hitter and team captain leads St. Maries in kills with 10 a match, hammering home 15 Tuesday in a 3-0 IML victory over Kellogg that coach Jamie Sloper said may be the best performance of Robinson’s career.

But try getting Robinson to talk about individual exploits.

“As a captain, it makes it really tough (to have individual goals) because you feel like you can’t make mistakes,” said Robinson, who last year earned her first all-IML honor. “And so it’s kind of a pretty broad goal, but it’s to be the best leader that I can.

“I’m not going to be on my game every night, but if I can be a vocal leader, and help up win even when I’m not on, that’s probably my main goal.”

She anticipates stiff competition this year in the notoriously unpredictable IML.

“Timberlake is missing a couple of players and I know they are going to be pretty tough when they get them back,” Robinson said. “We haven’t played Priest River yet, but I think Priest River is going to be pretty good, too.

“Last year, it seemed like the IML was a pretty easy league, but this year all of the teams have grown up a lot – they have older players and more experience and I think the IML has gotten a lot harder.”

Robinson, though, said she and her teammates are targeting much bigger game than Tigers and Spartans.

“At the beginning of the season, our coach – we have four seniors on my team this year – sat all four of us down and asked us ‘What’s your goal?’ ” Robinson said. “And without even looking at each other or questioning it, we all said, ‘We want to bring some hardware home from state.’ ”

As for next fall, she said she’ll hang up the sports and study accounting at either Washington State or Albertson College in Caldwell.