By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Friday, May 26, was an extremely tough day for Olathe Northwest softball and track and field standout Kendall Yarnell, one she'll never forget.
But now Yarnell, who recently completed her junior year of high school, has turned her attention towards trying to help make sure something good comes out of that heartbreaking day, not only for herself but for other multi-sport athletes across the state.
Olathe Northwest star Kendall Yarnell finished second in the Class 6A discus as a freshman and sophomore, but was not able to compete in this year's event after KSHSAA officials ruled that Yarnell was not properly scratched out of an earlier event. [Submitted photo]
Kendall Yarnell, who recently completed her junior year, is a softball and track and field star for Olathe Northwest. [Submitted photo]
After dropping a marathon 3-1 12-inning decision to Washburn Rural in a Class 6A state softball semifinal, Yarnell made the extremely tough decision for forego the third-place game and make the 2 hour, 30-minute trip to Wichita with her parents so the 6A leader and two-time state runnerup in the discus could compete in that event at the state track and field championships.
Yarnell, also a state qualiifier in the 6A shot put, made it to Wichita State well before the start of the discus competition, but was informed by Kansas State High School Activities Association officials that she would not be allowed to compete in the discus because she had not properly been scratched out of the shot put earlier in the day. That ruling eliminated Yarnell from state competition for the remainder of the meet.
"After we lost in 12 innings, and after I got intentionally walked six times, I was kind of like, 'That actually could possibly happen again in the third-place game,' and I didn't want that to happen,'' Yarnell said in a phone interview. "The whole team and Shawn (Lopez, Northwest's head coach) kind of knew I was very upset after the loss but it was also that I was going to make the decision to go down to Wichita and it was hard to leave my team.
"Then when I went down to Wichita and they scratched me it was really hard because I had just gone through so much emotion about leaving my team. By the time they had scratched me I had already known that we had gotten fourth at state for softball, that we had already lost the third-place game. So it was a feeling of, 'If we would have known about this I could have been able to help.' It was a lot of weird feelings, a lot of frustration, a lot of feeling like I let down a team.''
Given nearly two weeks to reflect on the events of that day, Yarnell now just wants to be a proponent for the KSHSAA to change its state tournament schedule and create less overlap to be more condusive for athletes who qualify for state in multiple events to be able to compete.
"It was hard, but after like two weeks now it's one of those things where we knew a conflict was going to happen at some point and whatever happened down in Wichita is what happened,'' Yarnell said. "It is what happened and now we're just looking to change dates and hopefully never have any more conflicts.''
Yarnell, who has made an oral commitment to play Division I softball at Central Florida, made it very clear that she doesn't want to be critical of the KSHSAA
"At the end of the whole situation, KSHSAA did make the right call, I didn't technically get scratched from shot put and there was a rule,'' Yarnell said. "There's all these different things of how it could have been communicated and there was communication (between Kendall's father, Lucas, and the KSHSAA), but at the end we didn't follow a rule that was technically there, so that was the consequence.
"But I think now I hope that people realize that this situation just wouldn't happen if the dates wouldn't have overlapped. I wonder how many people would come forward to do (multiple sports) if they were given the opportunity.''
In addition to Yarnell, multiple athletes across the state had to make tough decisions over state week about which sport they would compete in at state or try to take on the difficult juggling act of traveling back and forth between state sites.
That list includes McLouth senior Corissa Bandel, who qualified for the 2A girls 100-meter hurdles on Friday morning of the state meet and then went to Pratt to pitch her team to its first-ever state softball title later that day before returning to Wichita to finish fourth in Saturday's hurdles final, and Columbus senior Kolt Ungerheuer, who opted to forego the opportunity to defend his 3A state title in the boys high jump to help his team post a second-place finish in the 3A state baseball tournament at Manhattan.
"We've known it's been a problem since my freshman year and honestly we knew that until there was a conflict it wasn't going to get changed until it made a multi-sport athlete make a decision or something happened like it did,'' Yarnell said. "I knew that I was going to have to lose out on some opportunities because of (the KSHSAA schedule), but like I told my dad, I was willing to be the one to sacrifice to get a change made because that's the big hope. I hope that no other athlete has to go through what I went through.
"What happened in Wichita happened in Wichita. You can't change that, but you can change the dates to not let that happen again and that's been the big point for us.''
