REYNOLDS YARBROUGH MAKING SAVE
By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
He’s small for a traditional lacrosse goalie but makes up for it and more with a big heart and loads of determination.
And we should add he has a love for the game that is second to none, except for maybe his twin sister, also a lacrosse player.
We are talking about five-foot-seven Reynolds Yarbrough, a senior-to-be at Bainbridge High School who has been playing lacrosse since the third grade and this past year was named to the Washington High School Boys Lacrosse Association Division I All-State first team as its goalie.
“He plays in national tournaments and is one of those unconscious Ninja-like goalies who is amazing to watch,” says Andrea Mackin, a Bainbridge lacrosse parent. “In the state high school semi-final game against Mercer Island he took something like 29 shots on goal and stopped all but seven.”
Yarbrough, whose twin, Cappy, plays on the Bainbridge girls lacrosse team, came to Bainbridge 13 years ago when his father, Champ Yarbrough, was transferred to Seattle by job from Charleston, S.C.
It was dad who got his kids interested in lacrosse. Champ Yarbrough, who is the president of the Bainbridge Island Boys Lacrosse Club (he got tricked into it, he says), went to college at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. his freshman year and finished his education at College of Charleston. He happened to come across the sport during his college days and was fascinated by it.
“When I went to college I watched it,” says Champ Yarbrough. “I hadn’t seen it before and I thought it was a great game. When we moved out here to Bainbridge, shortly after we got here, I was driving around one morning and I seen this team practicing and I thought I got to get my son to play lacrosse. That was how it all got started.”
Reynolds was in T-ball one year and didn’t like it. But when his dad asked if he wanted to try lacrosse, he jumped at it.
“Sure,” Reynolds replied. “I’ll give it a shot.”
It turns out the sport was just what Reynolds wanted, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Lacrosse is big news back on the East Coast, and is rapidly growing on the West Coast. Bainbridge has had a terrific program for years – the girls and boys teams compete each year for state titles – and coupled with that terrific program is all the camps and tournaments Yarbrough has attended in the intervening years, turning him into a quality goalie who is sure to attract the attention of college coaches this summer ..
Yarbrough again this summer is playing with Team Washington, a select team that on July 13 will head off to Maryland to play in two big national tournaments, one at University of Maryland Baltimore County called the Brine Shootout and the other at Johns Hopkins called the Champ Camp.
And he just got back from a week at the University of Richmond for a showcase involving coaches from the state of Virginia. Champ Yarbrough’s parents went to Richmond.
The Brine Shootout is an invitational, and this year 28 lacrosse teams from around the country will participate in the four-day affair (July 14-17).
The Champ Camp is from July 17-20 and traditionally has some of the best players and teams playing in it.
“Reynolds is very fast,” says his dad. “He’s brainlessly fearless, I think (laughs). To be honest with you, I don’t know how he does it. The ball is rock hard, people are throwing it at you 95 miles and hour and you are wearing very few pads. But he just keeps playing. He loves it.
“When it bites them, it seems to bit them hard. You got kids who are really into it.”
REYNOLDS YARBROUGH (7)
From the third grade until ninth grade, Yarbrough played goalie and also on the field as an attacker (he also played football as a running back and linebacker from the third grade to his sophomore year).
He’s been the goalie for Bainbridge lacrosse since his freshman year, when he helped the team made the state championship game. His sophomore year he was honorable mention All-State and this past year made the first team All-State.
He’s also played on the Brandy Bunch’s lacrosse team, which is located on Long Island, N.Y., and is named for Brady Ly Arthur Wein, who at four months was diagnosed with acute Myelogenous leukemia. The current team is made up of players from 18 states and two other countries. Its mission is to keep everyone updated on the progress of Brady and his Bunch as well as raise awareness of childhood cancer and the value of life.
Yarbrough has not gone back to Long Island, but played with the team once in Vail, Colorado, and last year in San Diego.
The coach of the Bainbridge Boys Lacrosse team is Jack Visco, who says of Yarbrough,” he’s about five-foot-seven and about a buck 50 (in weight), but has lightening quick reflexes, and he studies the game.
“He is the one that drives everything. It all starts with the goalie. Even college coaches, the first thing they recruit is a goalie. A good goalie gives you ball control.”
Visco adds Yarbrough has quick hand-eye coordination that allows him to stop balls from 12 yards out. And that takes some quick, quick coordination because the ball arrives from there in about a fifth of a second.
“He’s by far the best in the league,” says Visco.
Being originally from the East Coast, Yarbrough wants to go back there to a college somewhere once he graduates next year from Bainbridge. There is a difference in play between east and west, and Yarbrough wants to be exposed to some of that quality back east.
“I held my own (at the Richmond Spiders Shootout at the University of Richmond), “ he says, but adds that the play back east, “is faster and the stick skills are better. And there is definitely an air about it. There’s more prestige and legacy about it.”
And he laughs about being shorter than more traditional goalies, because it takes all sizes to play it. He points out that Remington Steele was an honored goalie at Limestone College in (Gaffney) South Carolina , and was the starting goalie for the U-19 Team Canada in the 2008 World Championships, and he was just five-foot-five. Steele is now an assistant coach with the Limestone women’s lacrosse team.
“There is a lot of stuff that comes with being short that is nice,” says Yarbrough. “I am close to the ground so you get to the ball on the ground quicker. You can shoot anywhere on a lacrosse goalie, and some like to shoot at their feet and if they are tall the goalie can’t get there as quick. I can get there quicker than goalies six-foot-one or six-toot-two.”
When Yarbrough came up to the high school and tried out for the varsity team, Visco handed him three lacrosse balls and told him to learn how to juggle them to improve his hand-eye coordination.
“I’m working on four of them right now,” says Yarbrough, who when he comes back from the East Coast will be at the Egg and Spoon Camp on the island and also help coach young kids on how to play goal.
As for the future, Yarbrough would love to play lacrosse until they rip off the uniform, and hopefully that will be a long time from now.
“I want to play as long as I can,” he says. “I love the game.
The next journey after high school will hopefully include playing college lacrosse at a school back east. It would be great, he says, if he could play for the University of Richmond Spiders where his grandparents went.
But Yarbrough also recognizes that in college academics come first. He is a 3.4 grade-point average student who takes pride in his books as well as stopping shots on goal.