Duke college football star Kimari Robinson has issued an apology after facing accusations of frightening a Blue Devils trainer by knocking away her arm while she attempted to assess an injured player during the team's matchup against North Carolina.

Duke suffered a 24-20 defeat to Bill Belichick's Tar Heels in an intense college football rivalry clash. Tensions peaked during the third quarter with UNC ahead 17-10, as Blue Devils standout DaShawn Stone lay on the field injured.

Two staff members were already tending to Stone while a worried Robinson hovered nearby. When a third trainer entered the field and tried to guide Robinson aside so she could examine Stone, Robinson reacted with a classless act by swatting her arm away.

The junior from Miramar, Florida, who has been a regular starter for the Blue Devils throughout the last two seasons, faced social media backlash with accusations that he left the trainer "terrified."

As public criticism mounted, Robinson released an apology addressing the incident. "I want to publicly apologize to the member of our training staff for how I acted toward her during Saturday's game," Robinson wrote.

"I was completely wrong, and she did not deserve that. I apologized to her personally and checked to make sure she was okay. The injured player on the ground, DaShawn Stone, is like family to me, and I was scared he might be seriously hurt.

"But being worried about him does not excuse how I treated her. I should have controlled my emotions, and I didn't. I'm truly sorry for my actions and for letting her, myself and our program down. I have to be better than that."

The loss for the Blue Devils saw their 2026 record fall to 4-2, drawing them even with Belichick's Tar Heels. The pivotal moment came in the fourth quarter, when Belichick opted to go for it on 4th down rather than punt to Duke.

"Yeah, I wasn't punting again. It hadn't gone well for us. And so unless it was like fourth and third or something, but I didn't want to give the ball back and thought we'd go down with take our best shot," Belichick said.

"And we hit a lot of quick timing passes and I thought that Billy did a good job of distributing the ball. It's a battle. They're a good pass rushing team. It was a battle to keep him off the quarterback.

"I thought he did a really good job of stepping up in the pocket and kind of taking the ends out of the rush and our tackles were able to ride them by, but I mean it wasn't easy. But yeah, I wasn't going to punt that last series."

The victory represents arguably the most significant triumph of Belichick's Tar Heels era to date. "I give a lot of credit to Duke. It's a good football team," Belichick said.

"They're well coached, and they battled hard, and fortunately we were able to make a couple more plays than they did, but really happy for our team.

"They worked extremely hard, especially our seniors. It meant a lot to them to ring the bell. And so happy for them and proud of them."