By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
Carolynn Anne Parham (Cappy) Yarbrough has been having a traveling summer. There was the three weeks in Russia, and the trip with her select lacrosse team – Puget Sound Select – to the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area to play against some of the top teams from this country and from around the world.
But that is almost second nature to Yarbrough, whose nickname Cappy derives from the initials of her full name plus an added “P.”
“She is really well-rounded,” says Tami Tommila, who is her coach with Bainbridge Girls Lacrosse and is the co-coach of the Puget Sound Select. “She just got back from Russia to help out orphans (actually foster kids) there. It’s just not about sports with her, which is nice.”
Yarbrough, who is a lacrosse defender and a senior-to-be at Bainbridge High School and is the daughter of Champ and Kelley Yarbrough, went to Russia through the Bainbridge-based non-profit Camp Siberia, which since 1999 had been going to Russia to help out with the orphans.
Because of politics a course correction had to be made and a trip wasn’t made last year. This year, though, the organization sent Yarbrough and others to Camp Siberia-Kitezh as volunteers to help, as its Website says, “to enrich the lives, not only of the foster children, but anyone who comes to Kitezh.”
“We spent two weeks in the village (Kitezh) and one week touring St. Petersburg and Moscow,” says Yarbrough. “I absolutely loved it (St. Petersburg) because of the architect. It was really cool to be in the middle of history.”
Yarbrough also has been part of the Island Ambassadors Program that promotes tourism on the Island. If that isn’t enough, Yarbrough, who sports a 3.717 grade-point average and is in the Honors Society, plays lacrosse on a serious level with a Bainbridge program that is one of the best in the state, and then during the rest of the year is on PPS team that also is one of the best around.
The Washington Schoolgirls Lacrosse Association honored her as an All-Conference first team player and by naming her an Academic All-American.
“She is as competitive a human being as I have ever met,” says her dad, Champ Yarbrough, which is saying something because the Yarbrough family is very competitive.
Champ Yarbrough tells the story about his daughter running for an office at school and not winning. When he found that out from his wife, he began scheming how to make it better for his competitive daughter.
His first words to her were,” Cappy, I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah, that is fine,” she answered. “I’m running for something else now. I’m going to run for something until I get elected for something.”
“That is the way she takes with everything,” says Champ Yarbrough.
The first time Yarbrough was exposed to lacrosse was in the third game. She and her twin brother Reynolds, who plays for the Bainbridge boy’s lacrosse team, attended a co-ed camp when they were in the third grade.
“This was almost the end of Cappy’s lacrosse career as the coaches paired them together for drills,” says Champ Yarbrough,” which was a disaster because girls lacrosse sticks are MUCH harder to throw and catch with than boys sticks, and Cappy ended up frustrated and furious with her brother and was done with lacrosse until the fifth grade.”
But like everything else in her life, Yarbrough was not going to be defeated so easily. So she began playing the sport again (as well as basketball until the eighth grade) and her freshman year at Bainbridge she on the Division II varsity team composed of mainly freshmen and a few sophomores that competed against other D-II conference teams that were made up of juniors and seniors.
“Cappy was a captain of the D-II team with Sallie Marx,” says Champ Yarbrough. “They made it to the semifinals of the D-II playoffs that year despite being the youngest team.”
As a sophomore, Yarbrough was one of two sophomores that started on the Division-I varsity team that won the state title. Last year she again started and this coming season she will be a team captain.
Yarbrough and the PSS team just got back from the Women’s Lacrosse 2013 World Cup being held in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. The team played seven games in the accompanying Turtle Festival, going 5-2 against excellent teams from this country and from Canada, England and Japan.
“Cappy is a great kid,” says Tommila. “She has kind of come into her own. She has matured in a lot of ways and is a good teammate. She is savvy about the choices she makes (on the field). She is very dedicated to the program, both on and off the field. She is a good role model.”
The Russia trip has had a big influence on Yarbrough.
“Well, I hope to go somewhere and study history and learn Russian,” says Yarbrough. “I want to go back to the village I was in. I’m really interested in the language. It’s a beautiful language. I wish I could speak it. So I have decided to learn it. And I definitely wan to play at some level of lacrosse – probably club.”
When she goes off to college, it will probably be back on the East Coast. Her family is originally from South Carolina and she has deep family roots back east.
For now, though, Yarbrough is excited about the next Bainbridge lacrosse season, which runs from March into May.
“We are expecting big things,” says Yarbrough. “We’re going to win. Our goal is to win state.”
