Yoemen basketball hope to improve on 2023
The Cameron Yoemen basketball team is looking to improve on a pretty decent season 2023 season.
They finished the season with a record of 17-16 and a district record of 7-6, making the playoffs. They were defeated in the Bi-District round by the Franklin Lions in a heartbreaking 50-47 defeat that came down to the final seconds.
This season, under Coach Matt Fitzsimmons second year in Cameron, the Yoemen plan to build off of last year’s postseason appearance and have a better year than expected. He feels it will be a smoother transition to start this season as opposed to last year where they were learning brand new stuff.
They will have a pretty new team with only three returners from last season: Kelton Driska, R.J. Wagnon, and D.J. Flemings. In total, they will have seven seniors: LeRon Mathis, Lyndon Stifflemire, Jaxon Villalon, Tim Grice, Zach Evans, RJ Wagnon, and DJ Flemings.
It will be a tough road back to the playoffs, but Coach Fitzsimmons feels they have what it takes to return to the playoffs. He believes it’s the same thing year in and year out and that the thing about competitive sports is what are you willing to do to achieve your goal.
“We feel like time, effort, sweat, and sacrifice are the four commodities that you have to pay into to achieve a goal,” Fitzsimmons said. “We believe that champions are willing to pay the max in each of those areas. We don’t know what Rockdale, we don’t know what Academy, we don’t know what they’re doing right now, and we don’t want to be a team that’s outworked. Keeping that mindset, playing controlled basketball, playing defense, those kinds of things put you positions to be in the playoffs. The kids know that we can do it, and that’s a huge thing for us. I feel like with our group, if we have success early, we’re going to finish much stronger late.”
The journey will be tough as this year is the year of the district realignment. The Yoemen will not be switching regions or districts and will remain in Region 3 District 19. They will also have many familiar opponents in Lexington, Little River Academy, Rogers, and Rockdale. They will also be losing Lorena to 4A and in their place they are getting two new teams. Those new opponents will be Franklin and Thrall (who has bumped up from 2A) while also losing McGregor and Troy. The road back to the playoffs will be tougher with two of the new teams in their district making deep playoff runs last year, Franklin going three rounds deep and Thrall reaching the State Tournament.
“When you’re used to winning, that’s an advantage,” Fitzsimmons said. “You’ve got an extra poker chip in your pocket that you can play at any time, typically because those kids know they can win. Believing you think you can, you’re probably right. If you think you can’t, you’re probably right, so it works both ways and those kids will think they can do it. We have to be on that same level and try to be above it. And again, back to paying in, we’ve got to go pay our dues, we’ve got to go sweat it out, no one’s going to give us anything. When people see the Yoe symbol, we’re going to get people’s best and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Metal sharpens metal and we’ve got plenty of people to make us better.”
The Yoemen began their season on Friday, Nov. 22, on the road against the Mount Calm Panthers. The Yoemen were victorious, winning 64-34.
Their next game will be Tuesday, Dec. 3, in Groesebeck and they will compete in the Lorena Tournament Dec. 5-7.