Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. The Road not Taken, Robert Frost.
There’s a new sheriff in town as the saying goes. If today’s prospect camp at Steele Stadium was any indication, it looks like the Panthers of Kentucky Wesleyan may have found their Wyatt Earp in Head Coach Craig Yeast.
The first thing fans have to know about coaching and playing at the NCAA, Division II level is that in order to thrive, one has to recruit Division I athletes. We have seen this in Yeast’s inaugural recruiting class. Players like Diamond Glover from Owensboro, Landon Fields (Blue-Grey HS All-American) from Somerset, and QB Wiley Cain from Pulaski County are just three prime examples of this particular phenomenon demonstrated in the Panthers 2019 incoming class.
Allow me to put it this way, if one were strolling around the Kentucky Wesleyan football facility today anticipating seeing some sort of Kentucky High School version of its football “B league,” then you must have been absolutely distraught. We saw plenty of A-listers and who would know that better than the only media outlet to cover Kentucky middle and HS football year round?
We got there to see the skills work a bit and saw such Division I talent like Trigg County’s Cameron Jordan, who the Naval Academy is hot after, as is Air Force. We saw Imonte Owsley too, from Owensboro Senior, western-Kentucky’s most explosive and electric athlete and maybe one of its fastest players not named JeVon Leavell. We also saw LBs Riley Thompson from Graves County and long, rangy, athletic freak, Grayson Cook, an All-Stater who traveled from Belfry, Kentucky to show Wesleyan of what he is capable.
When it was “the big-boy’s” turn, it was apparent Kentucky Wesleyan had, once again, drawn the crème de la crème, as the French would say. William Long was there on the very day he learned he had performed so well at the Tennessee Regional at the Blue-Grey HS All-America combine that he was moving on to a Super Regional. Andrew Clifton from Johnson Central, who we believe to be among the very best drive blockers in the Kentucky HS game. Wilson Kelly from Boyle County, another elite inside-technique defensive lineman was on the scene together with a young man we consider second only to John Young at the tackle slot, and Kentucky’s premier RT, Peyton Blackburn from Shelby Valley. Blackburn really put on quite a display of prowess in his one on one opportunities.
Kentucky Wesleyan University has an advertising campaign called The Wesleyan Way. We have linked some on-line literature describing it more fully than we will on the present forum.
Today’s combine showed KPGFootball that Kentucky Wesleyan is traveling a different path these days in athletics. They have chartered a new course and direction. There appears to be a new “Wesleyan Way” for its football program. This particular way encompasses playing championship caliber football by collecting first-rate football players from the fertile but often overlooked commonwealth talent pool.
Make no mistake, Kentucky Wesleyan is putting together the horses to travel the “Championship Way” and seem determined to arrive sooner rather than later. If the stable full of athletes we saw at today’s prospect camp should provide any indication, it appears the desired destination isn’t too far away either.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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