Liberty's Steve Yates has the game, the confidence, and the hair
By Chris Burke
By 10 p.m. on Jan. 25, Osbourn Park and Liberty had battled for almost two hours. The game was an intense, emotional and exhausting slugfest.
Yet Steve Yates still looked like he could play into the morning.
As he and his Eagle teammates put the finishing touches on a road victory, Yates was like a six year old after one too many juice boxes. He was bounding in and out of Liberty’s timeout huddles, and flying after loose balls, even as LHS led by double digits.
And he talked just enough smack to let the Yellow Jackets know he was having the game of his life without being overly obnoxious about it.
From the opening tip, Yates had a little extra swagger — no small feat as he constantly borders on the line between confident and cocky.
At halftime, he had 14 points and he followed with 12 in the second half, constantly launching himself to the basket, his blown-out afro bobbing in the air as he poured in another Dr. J. finger roll off the glass.
All night, Yates was the perfect concoction of self-assurance and ability.
His 26 points topped a previous career high of 25, also set against OP earlier in the season.
Yates coolly walked off the court afterwards, a smile on his face, gesturing victoriously toward the throng of Liberty fans in the crowd.
The Yellow Jackets were just reminded what the rest of the district is finding out: This kid can play.
Humble beginnings
So many basketball success stories start the way Yates’s did. As much as people funnel kids into expensive basketball camps and clinics, it’s often the simplest of beginnings that lay a foundation.
“I started playing basketball back in maybe fourth grade,” Yates said. “It just started back with me and my brothers and sisters on a little dirt court, and we’d just play for hours and hours until my mom told me to come in.”
The game seems ingrained in Yates’s DNA. His older brother Jonothan Robinson, now 28 and once a two-sport star for Liberty, loves the game. Same goes for Steve’s sisters, Janee and Christina Yates and Chanita Robinson. Chanita, in fact, had multiple collegiate hoops scholarship offers, but chose “not to go in that direction,” Steve said.
Jonothan is most responsible for Steve’s growth as a player, even though Yates' physical growth remained minimal.
Yates stands 5-foot-11 now. He was just 5-7 in sixth grade (and able to dunk a basketball, he says) when it became apparent he'd never develop into a center. That's when the real work began.
“We already knew I wasn’t going to be the tallest player ever, so he had me doing ballhandling skills in stuff,” Yates said. “He just drilled me. What helped me a lot as a player was having my brother teach me things, the dos and don’ts.”
So Yates worked on simply getting better at the game.
Fortunately, he was clearly blessed with athletic ability, a characteristic that still stands as the best aspect of his game. He just needed to add the basketball basics that Jonothan kept stressing.
“He wanted to prepare me for things to come, and I knew I wanted to play basketball on teams,” Yates said. “He wanted me to focus on things that players my height needed to do , mostly dribbling and shooting.”
Further down the line, those things would start to pay off.
Learning the ropes
Yates’s high school career has been flashes of brilliance mixed with frustrating droughts. He’s tried to balance the latter by constantly working to improve.
He spent his entire freshman year on Liberty’s JV team. And last season, the sophomore jump to varsity was a rocky one.
On occasion, Yates played to his full potential and proved unguardable. Other times, he struggled with the quicker tempo and increased pressure of varsity ball, falling into periods of turnovers and frustration.
For the 2006-07 season, Yates averaged 5.9 points per game and hit only 3-of-25 3-point attempts.
“He did some real good things for us, but it was definitely a learning curve,” LHS coach Pat Frazer said. “There were games where he played an awful lot and games where things weren’t working out and he played hardly at all.
“That’s tough for someone who’s such a competitor.”
Difficult or not, Yates tried to deal with the hand he was dealt. He spent the year fighting for playing time and watching senior Jordan Taylor run the team. Taylor was the de facto star and leader for the Eagles last year — the guy who took all the clutch shots and handled the ball extensively.
“Being behind Jordan Taylor, he basically just showed me a lot of what my responsibilities were as a point guard,” Yates said. “He was a scorer, but he was a leader, too.”
Taylor’s departure for D’Youville (N.Y.) College left a gaping hole for LHS, both on and off the court. While Taylor was never a prototypical spokesperson for the team, he was no doubt a player that all the younger Eagles looked up to.
Without him, someone needed to play point guard and the Eagles needed guidance.
“I had to be a leader to my team,” said Yates of his focus last offseason. “I had to work hard in the gym.
“I had to mature.”
Stepping to the forefront
What you see on the court now is not a finished product, far from it. Yates still has his trying moments. He left Fauquier’s gym in tears on Jan. 11 after a last-second 3-pointer to tie fell short and the Eagles lost to their arch-rivals.
He had five turnovers and struggled to find his outside shot last Friday against Culpeper.
Where those blows unraveled Yates in the past, however, he’s dealing with them more effectively nowadays. Two games after the heartbreaker at FHS, Yates hung his 26 on Osbourn Park.
And after a game-long struggle versus Culpeper, Yates came up with a steal, offensive rebound and three free throws in the last moment to clinch a victory.
Through 19 games Yates averaged 12.6 points (more than double his 2006-07 production), 2.5 assists and less than two turnovers a game.
“It’s like the shortstop who makes errors because his range is so good,” Frazer said. “Sometimes he makes errors just through his athleticism…but he can also get to balls that no one else can.”
The improvement on the court has come hand-in-hand with growth off of it. Yates is a fiery personality when it comes to basketball — a trait that can be good and bad. Liberty needs Yates to help lead, but the Eagles are also full of emotional players and, as one would expect, they clash on occasion.
“Just like any family, we’re going to have arguments,” Yates said, before unveiling some of that burgeoning maturity. “At the same time, you have to realize the big goal that you’re going toward and realize that it’s bigger than myself or my ego.”
Those words are probably music to Frazer’s ears. He and Yates have a mutual respect for each other, but as those bad games weighed on the player, they did the same for the coach.
Part of the high school experience, of course, stems from how someone handles adversity. Frazer happily admits that Yates is more capable of doing it in his junior year.
“Last year, there were times when he was out of control and he’d get upset because he really wants to do well,” Frazer said. “He’d get upset and wouldn’t know how to handle it.
“I’m not saying he doesn’t get down, we all do, but he’s more level-headed, without question.”
As Yates moves through his final year-and-a-half of high school and aims toward playing college ball, he knows that all aspects of his game — on the hardwood and in the locker room — have to continue to evolve.
“I definitely think I can do it,” said Yates of making it to the next level. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work.”
It’s going to take plenty of ability, too.
Lucky for Yates, he appears to have that in bunches. And he’d love nothing more than to prove it to you on the court.