Living Up To A Name: Westside’s Moose Yarbrough Showed Strength, Determination In Rebel Athletics

By Editor | July 14, 2026 |

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by Janice Penix

Hayden Yarbrough’s dad called him “Moose” when he was just a baby, and it was a nickname he never managed to outgrow.

Instead, he lived up to it.

In many ways, Yarbrough became the embodiment of what Teddy Roosevelt described when he said he felt “as strong as a bull moose.” When Moose Yarbrough put on a Westside uniform, he was powerful, solid, and fiercely determined.

“Oftentimes you hear coaches referring to players that will run through a brick wall for you if you asked them to, and Moose is the very definition of that sentence,” Logan Wilbanks, head basketball coach at Westside, said. “I know without a doubt that Moose would do that for me at any given moment if I had asked him to.”

A Family Affair

A 13-year senior at Westside, Yarbrough is proud of his contributions to Rebel athletics. He was a key part of the school’s football, basketball and baseball teams and said he loved every moment spent competing.

“My all-time favorite is baseball, but I would say the one I succeeded in the most is probably football,” Yarbrough said. “And then the most fun I had was in basketball.”

He began playing sports before he was in school, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Ashton.

“Ashton was my inspiration for all the sports because he played all of them, and I would watch him and everything that he did,” Yarbrough said. “I would just want to be out there with him. I even practiced with him when I was little.”

Although his brother, who Yarbrough said, “never let him win,” helped him develop his competitive edge, it was his dad who taught him the fundamentals.

“My dad taught me everything I know, and he was the reason I played all of them,” Yarbrough said. “My dad coached me all the way up until high school. I started practicing baseball when I was two, and then was finally able to play T-ball when I was four years old. So I’ve been playing it my whole life.”

He said his dad passed on a love of the game Yarbrough carried on through his senior year.

“Honestly, I just love the sport,” he said. “It was my dad’s favorite sport and it was my mom’s favorite sport to watch. So it was kind of just passed down, that was our favorite sport.”

Yarbrough played catcher for Westside this year but had experience at multiple positions.

“I played catcher, and I was a pitcher, closer mostly,” he said. “I played every position except for outfield and first base when I got to high school. I started playing catcher in WAYO, and that’s where I learned most of it. When I got to high school, there was more to learn about the game. I had to learn more about situational stuff more than the fundamentals, so it was a different learning switch.

“We didn’t really watch baseball when I was growing up, like follow a certain team. But I loved Yadier Molina. He was the reason I was a catcher. I watched all his highlights when I was little and he was a big influence.”

The Favorite Sport

Being a catcher is a physically demanding position, but Yarbrough said he was up to the challenge.

“I loved playing catcher,” he said. “I did not like it when I was in youth league, but then when I got in high school, I really started liking it. Because in youth, my dad was my coach, so he pushed me really hard and it kind of made me frustrated, like ‘Why is he doing all this?’ And then in the future, it came back and really helped me.”

At the plate, Yarbrough was a contact hitter.

“As a catcher, you’ve got to learn to be able to see the breaking ball, and I was able to see it really well when I hit,” he said. “I’m not the biggest power hitter, but I was always able to find a way on base. For a while I was always on top of the baseball, which always made me ground the ball. So I really focused on line drives, and I really saw it improve. Being able to see, to watch the ball all the way through your path, even though it was something you were told in Little League, I had to focus on that. It’s like you’ve still got to go for those fundamentals and work on your form.”

His senior season, the Rebels finished in third place in district and qualified for the regional tournament for the second consecutive year. They lost to Mountainburg in the first round, but Yarbrough said it was still a memorable experience.

“We lost in a devastating fashion, but it was still very fun,” he said. “I got to play with my friends that I grew up with, so that was very fun. And it still meant a lot to make it to regionals. I just wish we could have made it back to state.”

Westside hosted the 2A-4 District tournament in April, giving Yarbrough the chance to deliver one of his most effective performances in front of a home crowd.

“In the first game of the district tournament, I was pitching that game, because we wanted to save Easton Williams and Nathan Powell for the next game. We were playing Acorn, who was a team that was able to hit really well, but I shut them out with 80 pitches in seven innings, and 13 strikeouts. It’s the best I ever pitched, and to be able to send my team to regionals was awesome.

“They were a good team and were able to hit really well, even though their record really didn’t show it. They were very good at hitting and were heating up, so it was very dangerous at the end. They were starting to put things together, and it was fun to kind of destroy their hopes in the regionals.”

Westside Superintendent Brad Kent, who also served as head baseball coach, had high praise for Yarbrough.

“Moose is the kind of student athlete you can build a program around,” Kent said. “He has no quit in him. Anything that gets asked of him gets done at a high level. Coaching would be really easy if all athletes had his work ethic.”

Personal Success On The Field

On the football field, Yarbrough was a versatile player, filling multiple roles for the Rebels.

“Football was what I feel like I succeeded in the most, but the record did not show it,” he said. “Sadly, we did not win a game this year, but it was really fun just being able to go out there and play the game I’ve always wanted to play one last time.”

As a senior, Yarbrough played fullback, running back, quarterback, and even left tackle in one game. On defense, he was an outside linebacker.

“I was kind of all over the place,” he said. “I was in for almost every snap. It was my senior season, so I really did not want to come out at all. I started at running back/fullback, and then one of our linemen went down, Ethan Williams, and then our center, Carter Williamson, went down and was not able to play for the rest of the season. We went on to have a rough time with our O-line, because it was a bunch of sophomores. They did as best as they could, and they pushed themselves every day to try to get better. You just couldn’t ask for more from them. It was a really unlucky event.”

The game after Williamson was injured, Yarbrough went in at left tackle until a replacement was ready. He returned to running back but soon found himself taking snaps at quarterback.

“I played quarterback against Hector and Mountainburg,” he said. “Those were probably my favorite games of the year. I had a great wide receiver who was very good this year, Payton Williamson, and another one that was just extremely fast, Zane Smith. If it wasn’t for those guys, I wouldn’t have nearly any of the touchdowns that I threw.”

Yarbrough said he had played some quarterback before, although it wasn’t his primary position.

“At the end of the year, I really strived to be a good quarterback,” he said. “We came close a couple times, but we came up short. I feel like I was kind of a natural quarterback. But I do want to say, our O-line had just one senior, Malaki Judah, after Ethan went down. There were a lot of young guys. If it wasn’t for the O-line, I wouldn’t have been able to have the time to even throw to those receivers. They did not stop until the whistle was blown. They worked endlessly to try to help our team succeed and to not let me get killed back there, and they did a great job.”

Stepping into the quarterback position, Yarbrough said he relied on his knowledge of the game to make up for his deficits in size and speed.

“The thing I focused on was my IQ, because I was not the tallest, not the fastest, not the strongest, he said. “So I had to specialize in something, and that was being the smartest. Knowing where they were going to go, just kind of picking up on the tendencies of the other team.”

The support of his head football coach, Michael Rankin, allowed Yarbrough to persevere through a challenging season he said.

“Coach Rankin was a very big support for me,” he said. “He knew that I could play a bunch of different positions and he would just be like, ‘I know that it’s rough, but I need you,’ and I played. I did not come out a single time. He really gave me confidence in myself. He made me want to strive to be better.”

Yarbrough also attributed assistant coaches Jeff Stewart and Bailey Hunstable for motivating the team.

“It goes back to the coaches,” he said. “Coaches can really make or break a team. You’re going out there, and you’re preparing that whole week for that team, getting confidence, learning their plays, mastering your own, and just working for three-hour practices. You’re out in the sun, it’s hot, it’s degrading. But at the same time, you’ve got to have a love for the game to show up. So the coaches are getting you mentally prepared, physically prepared, doing everything they can do to help you win that game. And there are some times where you can be the better team or maybe not the better team. It just depends. But the coaches are the ones that make you want to keep showing up.”

Fun On The Court

Yarbrough said basketball was the sport he most enjoyed playing. The Rebels had a historic season this year, earning the school’s second-ever bid to the state tournament.

“Basketball was the most fun,” Yarbrough said. “We went to state this year for the second time in history, and my brother was on the first team to go to state.”

Most of the team members shared his love for the game, Yarbrough said.

“The record really doesn’t show it, but every day we’d come in and we would just stay there after practice, because we all enjoyed being in the gym, playing against each other. Coach Wilbanks would have to kick us out. He would have to say, ‘Go home. I have a wife and a kid to tend to.’ We’d show up two hours early before practice just to play. It was just nonstop with basketball.”

Westside had 10 seniors on the roster this year. Yarbrough played power forward.

“I was the hustler, the grit person,” he said. “I was never really good at offense. I could shoot some, but I always played good defense and then I was able to take a lot of charges. I was just there to play defense.

“This was the one sport that I really wasn’t like the main person. We had Baylor Payne as point guard. He was the best player by far. And we had A.J. Elizondo, who was the shooter. He could shoot lights out. There were some shots that I just did not believe that he took and made. It was unreal. Our center was another senior, Noah Osornio. His footwork was really good, and he was able to always get the other team in the air and go up pretty easily. We had a good team this year.”

The basketball team’s success, according to Yarbrough, was partly due to the positive attitudes and cooperation among the players.

“We were always in a good mood,” he said. “We were all just very supportive. It seemed like, after almost the whole season passed, and we couldn’t figure out what team we were, that we came around the end of the year and put things together. We just kind of put the whole puzzle together, and then we went on a run in the tournament.

“We just kind of put everything together and hit the big shots when we needed to, and we came out victorious. We all celebrated, everybody was super hyped. It was very fun to be a part of that team.

“Basketball is one of those sports where, I just never got tired of it. I was able to just always play it with a bunch of the guys. You know, you run up twos, threes. It was just never ending.”

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Yarbrough said he is grateful for his time as a Westside Rebel.

“It meant a lot to represent the school the best I could,” he said. “It sucked at times, having Clarksville and Ozark right there. A bunch of the kids wanted to go to one of those schools instead of Westside, so we didn’t really always have the talent like other schools were able to. But we always did our best, and we’d always try harder.”

Since graduating in May, Yarbrough has been employed full-time at Apex Automation in Clarksville.

“I’m kind of a floater there,” he said. “It’s a machine shop, so I’m just learning, trying to learn as much as I can. Right now, my plan is to make a career of it, and I hope to stay there. It’s really fun, being able to learn so many different things that you can use, because they’re all trades. They have welding, they have machinists, they have electricians, there are even engineers. So there’s a lot of different aspects to it.”

When he isn’t working at Apex, Yarbrough is an umpire for youth leagues and hopes to develop that skill in order to officiate school events.

“I’m trying to get into umping, to stay close to the game that I grew up loving,” he said. “I hope that I can share my knowledge and teach these kids the game that I fell in love with.”

He said he is grateful for the support and encouragement of his family, especially his parents, Josh and Crystal Yarbrough.

“They’re just good people, and they’ve taught me a bunch of the things I know,” he said. “They have put me before them multiple times. I can never give enough thanks to my parents because they always will be there for me, and they’ve been the backbone to doing all the sports – being able to drive me everywhere, get me food afterwards if I was hungry, comfort me if I lost, and always cheered with me when I won.

“Ashton was always there, and he is still always there. I just have so many people to support me, who have watched me grow and taught me everything, made sure I stayed in line. They disciplined me when I needed to be disciplined. They have really just been everything I needed.”

Yarbrough’s basketball coach said he knows his former player has all the qualities to be a successful adult.

“Moose is one of those players that every coach dreams of having on their team,” Wilbanks said. “He is an athlete with unwavering commitment to each and every sport that he plays, which for him was almost every sport offered at Westside. He will give you every ounce of effort that he has in him.

“Outside of sports, Moose is one of the most respectful young men a person could meet. I have no doubt his future after high school will be filled with success based on how he handles himself in everything he does. I look forward to keeping up with him throughout his life and seeing all of the good things that he will do.”

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This story appears in the July 15, 2026, edition of The Graphic, available online and at businesses throughout Johnson and Franklin counties.

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