The Cameron Yoemen close in on win #700

[Ty Cobb]

Posted: Saturday, September 3, 2016 11:30 pm

BY TIM WAITS | TELEGRAM STAFF

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As if the Cameron Yoemen weren’t elite enough, they will soon enter into the most exclusive club Texas high school football has to offer to punctuate their lofty status.

Before the season is done — quite possibly before the month is out — the Class 3A No. 2-ranked Yoemen will be the seventh program to enter into the state’s 700 victory club. It’s a group that isn’t defined by dynasties, but by consistent quality for decades.

 

After defeating Gatesville on Friday, the Yoemen are just two wins from the 700 milestone, which will put them in a class with traditional stalwarts Highland Park, Amarillo, Plano, Temple, Mart and Brownwood. It’s a mark they are well aware of and solidifies the pride they have and the town has in their football team and their school.

“There is a sense of pride in this town,” said Yoe coach Tommy Brashear, a 1992 Cameron Yoe graduate now in his 13th year on the staff and first as head coach after Rick Rhoades left for Gregory-Portland last spring. “Other teams know that the Yoemen are going to play you as hard as they can and they’ve built on that greater and greater. When I played we thought we could beat anybody. It didn’t always work that way, but a lot of times we could.”

Cameron is leading a posse into the 700 club that should join them both this season and the next. Corsicana started the year with 693 wins followed by Tyler John Tyler with 691, Cuero at 689, Longview at 687 and Refugio at 683. The wild success of the Yoemen in the last seven years under Rhoades — an 82-17 record with five state title game appearances and three state championships — allowed them to shoot past those other traditional contenders to be next in line for that coveted landmark.

However, unlike most of the current 700 club members, the Yoemen have reached this plateau without having a marquee coach that became synonymous with the program for 20-plus years the way Bob McQueen was at Temple or Larry Dippel at Amarillo or Gordon Wood at Brownwood.

The only Yoe head coach to spend even 10 years at the helm was a fellow named Leo Jackson who guided the Yoemen to an impressive 39-5-1 mark from 1945-48, left for three disastrous seasons in Greenville before returning to Cameron to go a modest 30-29-1 from 1952-57. None have won 100 games from the Yoe sideline with Rhoades leading the way and Toby York, who went 76-11-2 in his seven years from 1981-87 which included the first state title in 1981, the next on the rung. The most well-known head coach to pass through Cameron was former Texas quarterback Todd Dodge, who in his first head gig went just 8-12 from 1994-95. He wasn’t a fit in Milam County, but found his footing later to lead Southlake Carroll’s dynasty and is now at Austin Westlake.

Neither have the Yoemen produced an NFL player, though Oklahoma senior wideout Dede Westbrook is a prospect to break through next year. Billy Pittman had a stellar career as a Texas wideout receiver from 2004-07, but never latched on to an NFL roster. Jafus White from the mid-70s and a standout defensive back at Texas A&I was drafted by the Green Bay Packers, but was cut. He later played briefly for the Toronto Argonauts in Canada and for the old San Antonio Gunslingers of the USFL.

Former Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane Jr. and current University of Texas athletic director Mike Perrin are proud Yoe alums and perhaps the most identifiable people to come out of Cameron with sports connections.

So what is it about this town that is 40 minutes away from the nearest movie theater and this football program that has played continuously since 1911 that makes it among the greatest in a state that is the greatest where high school football is concerned?

“It’s really the community,” said Ed Cauley, who coached the Yoemen to a 38-12-5 record from 1972-76, has retired in Cameron and does radio analysis for Yoe football broadcasts. “When I came here I was told these kids wanted to win and I was told these kids wanted to work. They are overachievers. The tradition is unbelievable. Kids grow up wanting to be a Cameron Yoeman.

“Whatever is going on at the school, whether it’s band or athletics, they are going to support it,” he said. “They grow up with that attitude. They expect to win. When the chips are down, they don’t know that they are.”

Of the six members of the 700 club and the next six soon to gain access only Mart and Refugio are smaller than Cameron.

To come from the smaller ranks where talent and depth tend to be cyclical, the Yoemen have managed to never go winless, to win at least 10 games 23 times and make 42 playoff appearances in what is now their 106th season. The ingredients that make a consistent winner have become so innate that defining it is difficult.

“Cameron is a very diverse community both racially and culturally,” Brashear said. “The sports are what bring the town together no matter if you have different beliefs or whatever.

“We expect to win,” he said. “Expectation is a big part of it.”

No one has seen more Yoe games than Bertie Shuemate, who can count on one hand how many he hasn’t seen since 1950. He has been in the athletic booster club since 1961, soon after he graduated, and has handled PA duties at Yoe home games since 1970 and he still can’t wrap his mind around the Yoemen’s success.

“Pride and tradition,” he said. “Other than that, I don’t know what it is.”

If pride and tradition are all it is, that’s enough in Cameron.

[aTmfan06]

They have a tough one this week

[Ty Cobb]

Yes they do.  Hopefully China Spring will be win #699

[Mr. Buddy Garrity]