The Foothills Falcons coaches are the ones who do the X’s and O’s to get to the high school provincial championship.
But, it’s team manager Lori Yeats who makes sure they actually get to the provincial championship game on the team bus.
“There are probably 50 different things in a day that Nate [assistant coach Nathan St. Dennis] and I don’t have to worry about because of Lori,” said Falcons head coach Darren Olson. “We get to spend more time coaching and less time managing.”
Those management things include getting buses, filling out player registrations, suppers, booking hotels…
It’s a job Yeats has been able to manage since 2006, when her son Kevan, played for the Falcons.
“I wanted to be involved and be involved with the team,” Yeats said.
“I just kind of pushed and started doing things for Kevin (then coach Kevin Klotz). My first trip was chaperoning the trainers, and then I started booking the hotels and getting better prices and things … I just kind of stayed.”
She stayed even after Kevan graduated in 2009.
“I love seeing how the players grow,” Yeats said. “That sportsmanship and teamwork is what helps form their lives.
“I find it fascinating. There are differences in the kids and in the parents by the time they leave the program.”
She has become close with the hundreds of players that have gone through the program.
“Even for a year or two after Kevan left, some of the kids were calling me ‘mom,’” Yeats said. “Now I am just the team manager. I don’t have the child there anymore, so I don’t know the kids as well. That is something I really miss.”
She serves another purpose for coaches. She is a buffer between them and parents wanting information.
It’s a job that can be harder than fishing a cat out of a flood.
“The coaches are going 24/7 between coaching and teaching,” Yeats said. “They don’t have time to be tracking the parents down for payments. By doing all the backend, stuff, it just freed the coaches up to do their jobs.”
She’s a good person for coaches.
Yeats has been part of five provincial titles, one more than Klotz and two more than Olson.
She does have some regrets.
She missed the Falcons famous 30-point comeback against the St. Mary’s Saints in 2006.
“I was texting Kevan’s girlfriend and I was so upset: ‘Oh, they are losing and I am not there for my son,’” Yeats said.
The Falcons came back and Yeats flew up from Arizona to make sure she didn’t miss Kevan’s provincial championship — on a Falcon team that featured Stampeder Anthony Parker and CFLer Bryn Roy.
She has one other regret from that first year.
“Not getting that (2006)necklace is the one thing I really wish I would have done,” Yeats said. “I have told my family, that if they really want to do something special for me, get me that.”
She plans to step down after the 2018 season.
