Saxons’ Taylor Yonago wrestles past setback

Going into his junior season last year, Taylor Yonago was looking to be one of the top 119-pound wrestlers in the state. During a premier club soccer game in August, though, Yonago’s season would change, as he suffered a broken tibia and fibula in his left leg while being tackled.

His long rehabilitation left even Yonago doubting he once again would be the wrestler who had finished seventh in the previous state tournament.

“Those thoughts did go through my mind because my leg looked bad,” said Yonago. “When I got the cast off, I looked down at my leg, and it looked like a bone.

“I lost all my muscle. It looked like a pencil practically. It was really weak, too, and skinny.”

“I remember doing the leg extension machine, and I was trying to curl the one-piece thing, which is 5 pounds without any weight, and I was having a lot of trouble with that. That really made me scared that it would take me a really long time to get my strength back.

“I wasn’t sure I would get it back in time.”

Yonago would make it back and then some. In fact, he would be back on the mat competing by early January.

“I’ve gone through this business enough to know that with that kind of a break, I knew he would be back,” said Ferris head coach Tim Owen. “My goal even at the time I heard about it, my hopes were that we would have him back after Christmas, and that’s kind of what worked out.

“When I saw him wrestle, I was pretty impressed with his ability to withstand something like that and still be tough on mat. The biggest question mark was going to be his conditioning. He was going to have to get in shape.

“At the same time, he moved up to a higher weight than I thought he was going to wrestle at. I thought he’d come back at 119, and he came back at 125.”

Yonago finished well enough to take fifth in the state at 125.

“First of all, I was just happy to wrestle in that meet,” Yonago said. “Then placing higher than I did the year before – that was really my main goal after I started wrestling again. It felt really good. I was really proud of myself.”

“He had a really good state tournament and wrestled well,” Owen said. “Even the guys who finished better than him weren’t really that much better than him.

“He was close with everyone he wrestled. Right there he got the motivation, having gotten to the state tournament twice, that he would like to be a state champion.

“Having watched his brother win it, I’m sure that’s more motivation. I know it’s not an unrealistic goal for him at all.”

Yonago’s brother Kyle graduated from Ferris last year, and Taylor found his absence to be difficult at first but has now made the adjustment to find new friends in the wrestling room. He has made the move up to 130 pounds this season, and some of those new friends are the heavier weight class wrestlers who now provide a tougher training forum for him.

“It’s making me stronger,” said Yonago. “As I’m going into these matches, I’m used to practicing with the big guys, and when I get into my matches, they feel smaller and I feel like I have more strength and power.

“They work on my endurance quite a bit too, because it takes a lot more to hold them down, ride them, and take them down because they have more weight.”

Yonago also has put the injury that nearly ended his career behind him, as he is not only one of the leading scorers on the soccer team, but was the kicker for the football team this past fall. He now hopes to take the state title in his final wrestling season at Ferris.

“I really don’t even think about it anymore.

“I remember how hard it was to kick; it hurt to kick a soccer ball with my left foot.

“Now it’s fine – 100 percent.”