Can you go home again? Ex-UK great Craig Yeast is about to find out.
For Craig Yeast, every contest of the 2022 football season will be a homecoming game.
After three seasons as head man at Kentucky Wesleyan College, the ex-UK Wildcats star has given up college coaching to return to his hometown as coach at Mercer County High School.
“I think at the end of the day, I just realized that I love coaching ball, but I really love helping young people more,” Yeast said Thursday. “So if I can make a really huge impact in my hometown, with young men and women who are where I am from, I just feel like that is the right fit.”
Yeast, 45, may have gone home, but he is not coaching at his high school alma mater.
Before he became a record-shattering wide receiver for Tim Couch in Hal Mumme’s Air Raid offense at UK in the late 1990s, Yeast was a star option quarterback playing for Coach Alvis Johnson at the now-defunct Harrodsburg High School.
In 2006, Harrodsburg High closed after the independent city school district was folded into the Mercer County schools via consolidation.
“It’s a little different for me because it’s no longer Harrodsburg, it’s all Mercer County,” Yeast says. “That’s the only real difference. Other than that, home is home. I still grew up here.”
Yeast says part of the appeal of going home was that current Mercer County school officials impressed on him their commitment to reaching out to all segments of the community.
“I feel like they are doing a good job of trying to rally all of the people, Black, white, you name it, it doesn’t matter where you come from,” Yeast says. “They are trying to rally everybody, bring everybody together and make our community the best it can possibly be. That is very refreshing, just to know these things are going on here in Harrodsburg.”
Alvis Johnson says his former star player has personal qualities that could make him a major asset in uniting all of Mercer County’s communities.
“Craig is a communicator. He communicates well with people,” Johnson says. “I think that will be his strong point here in Mercer County — get out in the communities and bring everybody on board.”
Yeast is back in his native county after three seasons spent in one of the most difficult college football head coaching positions in the commonwealth. Since 2004, Kentucky Wesleyan has had one winning season — 7-4 in 2014.
Even though his overall record with the Panthers (5-22) does not reflect it, Yeast believes he improved the football program at the Owensboro college.
When he took the KWC job before the 2019 season, Yeast says the program had only 37 players. That meant many of the newcomers Yeast brought in had to be rushed on the field without proper development time, he says. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the efforts to contain it, Yeast says his second season at Wesleyan also did not see the normal training of players.
“We lost a lot of development over those first two years,” Yeast said. “... But, overall, I really feel myself, along with my coaching staff, we did a really good job of bringing that program up. With me leaving, I feel like the cupboard is not (bare) there. I think (2022) is going to be a good year for them.”
Yeast’s job switch has not been the only noteworthy news made by his family in 2022. In April, Yeast’s son, former Kansas State and Louisville defensive back Russ Yeast, was chosen by the Super Bowl-champion Los Angeles Rams in the seventh round, the 253rd-overall pick, of the NFL Draft.
That made Craig and Russ Yeast a rare father-son NFL Draft duo. Craig Yeast was taken in the fourth round, the 98th overall pick, in the 1999 draft by the Cincinnati Bengals.
“That was cool. I am proud of Russ,” Craig Yeast says. “Russ has worked extremely hard. He’s had a lot of hurdles that he’s had to clear. He’s exceeded his own expectations at times. One of his ultimate dreams was to play in the NFL — and he’s there. Now, it’s just a matter of staying there.”
Many people in Kentucky still harbor fond memories of the football exploits of Russ Yeast’s old man. No Kentucky Wildcats receiver has ever caught as many career passes (208) for as many total yards (2,899) as Craig Yeast.
His overtime touchdown catch to beat Alabama 40-34 in 1997 is one of the most dramatic plays in UK football history. Yeast’s individual performance — a 100-yard kickoff return touchdown; TD catches of 97 and 74 yards — in Kentucky’s 51-35 loss at Florida in 1998 is one of the great single-game showings by a Wildcats player.
Twenty-four years since his Wildcats’ career ended, Yeast says UK fans still stop him to ask about those Alabama and Florida games.
“It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but it still pops up,” Yeast says. “It’s good to know people still remember you.”
The Mercer County players he will be coaching this fall are too young, of course, to have known Craig Yeast during his glory days as a player with UK or in the NFL.
“But their parents remember me,” Yeast says. “I’m excited to be back home, looking forward to leading the Mercer County program.”
