Kentucky Wesleyan College’s football team wants to build a partnership with the community, Coach Craig Yeast told the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce’s Rooster Booster Breakfast on Thursday at the Owensboro Convention Center.
Kentucky Wesleyan College’s football team wants to build a partnership with the community, Coach Craig Yeast told the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce’s Rooster Booster Breakfast on Thursday at the Owensboro Convention Center.
“Everybody thinks we’re trying to rebuild,” the Harrodsburg native said. “But we’re building from the ground up.”
KWC’s football team has struggled in recent years.
“We have to have support,” Yeast said. “We have to develop a plan of action.”
He said he has signed one of the largest number of recruits in several years — 45 student-athletes.
Yeast said he wants players that are strong academically as well as athletically.
“If you’re not here to graduate, you’re in the wrong place,” he said.
Yeast said he wants to keep players in Owensboro after they graduate.
“I want to see everybody in this room at the football games,” he told the crowd.
In life or in football, Yeast said, “You have to believe in something bigger and better than yourself.”
Family, he said, “is everything.”
Yeast said family is more than blood kin.
It means a community.
“I expect everyone to become my family,” Yeast said.
He was named the 17th head coach of the KWC program on Dec. 3.
Yeast came to Owensboro after three years as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Franklin College in Indiana.
In college, he set records as the University of Kentucky’s all-time receiver with 208 catches, 2,899 receiving yards and 28 touchdowns.
After college, Yeast played with the New York Jets and with the Hamilton Tiger Cats in the Canadian Football League.
By Keith Lawrence Messenger-Inquirer