It’s a respectful and humble culture that leads to success on a variety of spectrums, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to shy away from championing an individual who had a truly impressive performance within the week.
We’ve teamed up with the good people at Pettus Automotive to bring you a feature that will highlight one student athlete’s outstanding individual performance every week. Whether on the gridiron, golf course, diamond or hardwood, there is always someone doing something special. And we thought you’d all like to know about it.
This week the honor goes to Landen Yates, the humble star for the Festus Tigers Varaisty Football team. Yates has been a staple for years now, and he started off his Senior season with a bang. With the Tigers looking for their first Week One win against Ste. Gen in two years, they leaned on their Senior led-squad in the opener.
And Yates was the go-to player for the Tigers in all facets of the game.
With Festus down 7-6 early, Yates came up big and reeled in a 33-yd touchdown pass to put the Tigers up 14-7 after the 2pt conversion. That got the offense going and Festus continued to put points on the board throughout 1st half.
The Tigers came out of halftime leading 21-7, but needed a couple more scores to put the game out of reach for Ste. Gen. In the third quarter they marched down the field to the 10 yd line, and that’s when Coach Ofodile once again called upon Yates. He promptly punched in a 10-yd touchdown to extend the Tiger lead to 30-7.
Yates wasn’t done yet though, as the fourth was arguably his best quarter. It started off with the Festus defense shutting down the Dragon offense with a big third down sack from who else? Yates stuffed the QB, forcing them to punt, dropped back on the return and then the sneaky-fast all-purpose star made some magic happen. By juking and jumping over defenders he cruised 68 yards down the field and took it to the house for the final score of the game.
In the 38-7 victory, Yates also contributed to the Tigers‘ defensive dominance with six additional tackles to compliment the aforementioned fourth quarter sack, which finished off the Dragons for good.
That folks, is a hallmark era type of performance on the gridiron.
Thanks to Pettus Automotive for making this possible, and congratulations to Landen Yates on one heck of a week to start the season. The Tigers will face off against perennial powerhouse Valle Catholic this Friday. The game can only be viewed on the Streamline Sports iPhone, Android and Roku apps.
