YATES CENTER — The Yates Center High School mezzanine hummed with a new energy Wednesday for the once-fledgling Three Rivers League programs.
Yates Center football coach Ryan Panko, who organizes YCHS summer weights program with baseball coach Lane Huffman, said the overall turnout has been the strongest in years.
“The girls had a really good turnout and the boys had a pretty good turnout too,” Panko said.
“I’m pretty happy about that. It’s important. It’s not fun for these kids to only see each other during the season or when school starts. It’s nice to give these kids time to get acclimated to each other.”
The Wildcats graduated only six athletes last spring from all of last fall’s sports programs.
Within one year, Yates Center’s rosters flipped from some of the youngest in the TRL to some of the most experienced.
The Wildcats also showed significant improvement in fall, winter and spring sports, which may have motivated them this summer as they look to pick up where they left off.
“We probably should have had four or five (wins), and we were in position, but we couldn’t seal the deal,” Panko said. “We got some momentum going with all of our sports — girls and boys.”
Panko also credited the shift in attendance to beginning the program an hour later and allowing both boys and girls to workout together. By combining the programs, and starting a little later, instead of a handful of athletes attending, the upper mezzanine was filled with athletes.
The hum of idle chatter was the only thing more audible than the clanging of weights.
“We have a lot of freshmen this year, and now they have people to look up to,” Panko said. “It will carry them a long way in that team concept and accountability. Jeremiah Jones is 225 pounds, and he is a monster. We developed a lot of big kids this year.”
Panko credited seniors like Jones for providing leadership to the incoming freshmen during the summer strength and conditioning program. After receiving first-team All-TRL honors as a linebacker with 107 tackles, 54 solo tackles and a team-leading six sacks, Jones demonstrates what happens in the weight room translates to success on the field. He hopes to improve upon those stats this season.
“We had to learn how to be leaders ourselves and how to fight,” Jones said. “We got kicked around by older kids whenever we had to start our freshman and sophomore year. That developed a hardness in us. We’re ready, and we don’t want that to happen again to our school, our culture.”
Jones said this summer appears to be the beginning of a new culture at Yates Center High School.
With a strong senior class, the younger players have time to develop instead of having to grow up fast while facing athletes potentially five years their senior.
Jones was one of those athletes and looks forward to being a foundation for the next generation of Wildcats to build upon.
