After 46-0 loss in football opener, YMLA forced to face reality

Tyson Haynes-Jones rarely had a second to squeeze a Gatorade bottle through his face mask before he was back on the field.

Asking for a play off was never an option for the 6-foot-2, 170-pound junior who started at wide receiver, cornerback and played on special teams during the Young Men’s Leadership Academy’s debut as a varsity football program Friday night against Class 5A Chisholm Trail. The 46-0 defeat, with the final score also being the halftime score, quickly hammered home the reality of what the outnumbered and overmatched Wildcats are up against this season.

“It was tough, but our coaches teach us to fight through it,” Haynes-Jones said. “It is what it is; there is no backing down, there is no quitting. You’ve just got to play.”

YMLA is an all-boys magnet school in the Stop Six section of east Fort Worth. It is brimming with bright, young students, a good many of whom are building a football program the hard way: with limited support of facilities and equipment from the Fort Worth school district, and a misguided application of a University Interscholastic League rule that forces the Wildcats to play in Class 5A when their enrollment is that of a 3A school.

They won’t find sympathy under the lights. Chisholm Trail forced a couple of fumbles and led 13-0 barely two minutes into the game. But Chisholm Trail freshman football and wrestling coach Terry Wright did feel empathy for the Wildcats.

When Chisholm Trail opened in 2012, it fielded a varsity football team in Class 5A even though the school only had freshmen and sophomores. It finished the season with one win and a dizzying array of injuries, including an alarming number of concussions, said Wright, the last remaining coach from the original football staff.

“It’s tough and it’s demoralizing,” said Wright, recalling Chisholm Trail’s first year. “Our kids really fought through it and were better off for it. But we lost a lot of kids. A lot of them were one [season] and done. You’re getting beat down at the games, trying everything you can, but you’re overmatched.”

Tough schedule ahead

YMLA, which won’t have a senior class until next year, suited up 26 players Friday night, some 30 fewer than Chisholm Trail. Five YMLA players started on offense and defense, and seven played significant portions of the game on both sides.

Fortunately for the Wildcats, they headed home with more bruised egos than body parts.

With too many players forced to play on offense and defense against an opponent capable of substituting freely, the bubbling optimism that carried the Wildcats out of the visiting locker room quickly burst. Shoulders slumped and heads hung as shell-shocked players started to grasp their varsity reality. YMLA’s coaches went into overdrive, huddling players on the sideline and imploring on-the-fly pick-me-ups.

“We won’t get down and demoralized,” YMLA coach Joseph Heath said after the game. “They’re disappointed, but we’ll fix it; that’s what we do. There’s no getting down on yourself. It’s strap it on again and get back after it. We’ll be fine.”

It doesn’t get easier. After a bye this week, YMLA plays reigning Class 4A Division I champion Waco La Vega at Clark Stadium on Sept. 9, followed by a road game at last year’s Class 4A Division II runner-up, Celina. Then comes District 7-5A play against all Fort Worth high schools.

The nondistrict opponents certainly won’t do YMLA any favors, but it’s not like Heath set out to win the state’s toughest schedule award.

Once an appeal was made to escape the 6A district the UIL initially placed tiny YMLA in, Heath found schools of similar size had either completed their schedules or simply had no interest in playing because of a notion, Heath said, that YMLA presents a no-win situation: Lose to a first-year varsity team and everyone’s irate; win, and you’ve done what’s expected.

Meeting the challenge

Meanwhile, powerhouse programs like Celina and La Vega find schools their own size prefer not to take the risk of embarrassment. Both schools are in Class 4A; YMLA is in 5A, though its enrollment says it should be in Class 3A.

“We try to play teams bigger than us or the same size, but teams don’t want to play us,” Celina coach Bill Elliott said. “He [Heath] was willing to play us.”

Friday’s loss might also put an end to any misconception that little-known YMLA is a football factory in the making. It does have as many as four players with potential to become sought-after recruits. But scouring other schools for top-flight athletes is not in YMLA’s DNA. It was created to place accelerated students in smaller, more intensive classes than larger traditional high schools can offer.

Most in YMLA’s junior class have attended the school since the sixth or seventh grade. Heath, the former offensive coordinator at Southwest, said all were there before he arrived three years ago to start the freshman team. YMLA has lost some of its players to other public and private schools.

Heath’s pregame speech to his team, his voice growing louder, hit on that theme: “You’re successful because you’re here right now, because you didn’t get scared and run away somewhere else because you thought you could get a better chance. You succeeded because you didn’t run away from the challenge of the classroom. … Fellas, there’s not a person in here that I would trade for anybody who’s not in this locker room.”

This story was originally published August 29, 2016 at 4:05 PM with the headline "After 46-0 loss in football opener, YMLA forced to face reality."