Yoemen Sports Network

Keen’s compete in the Tevis Cup

Both Beth and Dale Keen competed in the Tevis Cup horse race this past week, and made admirable showings for their first time out. Both riders made it to the 50-mile mark before they had to pull out due to time restrictions.

“We just got behind the time cut off,” said Dale Keen. “We made it 50 miles but were behind the cutoff, so we had to drop out.”

According to Keen, only 42 percent of the riders actually finished the race this year, with a good portion coming out for lameness or metabolic reasons.

“It is a great event and it was nice to be apart of something like that, “added Keen. “The trail seemed like almost every step was up or down. It’s also real rocky and hot. We did pretty good and took care of our horses like everyone should, but maybe we could have been a little more daring.”

Football and Texas go hand in hand. Everything is bigger in the Lone Star state, and so are the stadiums that these teams play in every Friday night. Thanks to some extended runs over the last several years, Yoe fans have been able to travel to many different parts of the state and have witnessed games in some of the most state of the art stadiums in the country.

Today, I want to list some of my personal favorites. Most of these are going to be playoff venues, but there are a few small-school stadiums I would like to recognize. I will not be including any pro or collegiate stadiums on this list.

1. Waco ISD - Waco

Coaches from all across the state are in San Antonio this week for the Texas High School Coaches Association convention. Guest speakers and exhibits highlight the event, but there is also the release of the preseason regional rankings. These rankings list whom the THSCA believes are the top 10 teams within each division of each classification.

The panel of THSBCA members that voted on the poll have the Yoemen down as the sixth best team in their own region. Just weeks ago, Dave Campbell’s Texas Football rated the Yoemen as the preseason number 11 team in the entire state.

The full 3A DI region III rankings: 1. Franklin (4), 40), 2. Rockdale (26), 3. Woodville (21), 4. West (19), 5. Diboll (18), 6. Cameron Yoe (17), 7. Teague (16), 8. East Chambers (15), 9. Grandview (13), 10. Groesbeck (9).

Others receiving votes: Coldspring-Oakhurst 7; McGregor 6; Orangefield 6; Lago Vista 3; Maypearl 2; Whitney 2.

TASO looking for officials

Are you interested in earning a little extra money? Do you like sports? Well, this may be the time for your to get involved in being a sports official. The Texas Association of Sports Officials is currently seeing a shortage of officials for the upcoming football season. Simply put, the amount of new officials coming in has not been as high as the amount that are leaving. You factor more and more new schools that pop up every year, and that starts to become a problem. If things continue to slip, you could see more varsity football games played on Thursday and Saturday night instead of the large majority of games currently played on Friday.

Booster Club News

From the booster club on the upcoming sports season:

Last week, I saw an interesting post on social media which ranked the top five football dynasties over the last five years. Lists of that nature are always intriguing to look at, and it got me thinking to do my own personal top five. I’m going to go ahead and take this a step further, revealing who I believe are the top five all-time football programs in class 3A division one.

1. Cameron Yoe

Wimmer takes home first team all-state honor

On Sunday, it was announced that the Lady Yoe had a member of their softball team make the all-state team. Junior third baseman Kenzie Wimmer took home first-team all-state honors from the Texas Sports Writers Association for her production during the 2018 season. Wimmer, which was joined by Rogers pitcher Kylia Huhman as the only two players from 20-3A as first-team selections, once again led Cameron in most offensive categories. Below is the complete list of selections.

The little league baseball and softball programs in the area have once again had another successful year as a total of three boys and three girls teams are competing at state tournaments over the next two weeks.

For the girls, the Cameron Thunder (eight and under), Cameron Barbie Bashers (10 and under) and Milano Wolf Pack (12 and under) have advanced to state.  On the boys side, The Cameron Astros (t-ball), Cameron Yankees (10 and under) and Westphalia River Dogs (14 and under) are headed to the final tournament of the year.  

The Thunder (Groesbeck), Barbie Bashers (Temple) and Wolf Pack (Denison) are competing at state this week, while the Astros (Riesel), Yankees (Jacksonville) and River Dogs (Axtell) will be at state next week.   

We will have a full report on results in the following weeks of the sports.

Now that the rankings have been revealed and the dust has settled, I want to dive deeper, comparing them to what I came out with earlier this year, and give you my thoughts on what I believe is accurate and where we seem to differ.

Being ranked 11th is generous, but not surprising

When I flipped open my Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine to page 311 to get my first look at the class 3A rankings, I would be remiss to say I was surprised to see the Yoemen ranked just outside of the top 10. Cameron was certainly not a top 20 team last year when the season came to and end, but that was last year. For a large majority of other 3A division one teams across the state, there is a good chance they would not even sniff the rankings. Simply put, Cameron is the number one football program in the division, and it’s hard to keep a giant down for very long.

State 7-on-7 Round-Up

Over the weekend, thousands traveled to College Station for the annual state 7-on-7 tournament, and three teams left as champions.

In division II, it was a first-time winner as Midlothian Heritage cruised through the tournament with a perfect 7-0 record. Heritage, which beat Cameron in the Burnet SQT earlier this year, 40-26, won their pool over the likes of Silsbee (19-7), Brownwood (49-24) and Fairfield (41-28), before picking up wins over Hitchcock (41-34), Gatesville (39-21), Jim Ned (48-6), Mexia (40-13) and Pleasant Grove (39-20) in the championship match.

Mexia was in the semifinals before falling to Heritage, and Gatesville, which was in the second around, advanced further than any other Central Texas team.

Brock and Goliad, which are preseason number one and two teams in the state, advanced to the quarterfinals. That was as far as any 3A DI team advanced.

Do you have an interest in taking pictures at sporting events? If your child is active in sports, I know that most would like to have that collage of pictures as they progress and grow. Today, I want give some insight on taking pictures and some simple steps you can follow to help improve your pictures, regardless of the equipment you may be using.

How I began

I myself have only been taking sports pictures for a short time. I picked up and shot with my first DSLR camera back in 2015 when I first started working with the paper full-time. I had no prior knowledge of taking pictures, but knew it was an essential part of my job as a small town sport editor.

I had used the camera that was purchased by the paper, and essentially looked at several Youtube videos to help guide me through the picture-taking process.