Poinsettia Bowl: Navy player driven to Marines

As we go into a holiday weekend, our local teams are getting a break -- no Chicago pro sports action until the Bulls face the Knicks on Christmas morning. Tonight, there are a couple of Big Ten basketball games, a pretty one-sided NFL matchup and the Poinsettia Bowl -- although as of Wednesday night Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, where the game is to be played, was under several inches of floodwater, as was one of the parking lots. Maybe it's a good thing that one of the teams is Navy.


“Not everybody is even able to do this,” said Yarborough, whose team faces San Diego State. “I am able to it, and that’s why I’m supposed to do it. I feel like I’ve been called to do it. Not everybody can have a job like this. I can, so I need to do it and I think my country is calling me for a reason. I think God put me in this position for a reason.”

Yarborough is scheduled to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in history on May 28. He then embarks on a course not taken by most Navy grads, who serve a minimum of five years in the Navy or Marine Corps.

The past two years, about a quarter of Navy grads were commissioned as officers in the Marine Corps -- the most in a decade. Most of the rest go into surface warfare or flight school. Yarborough opted for arguably the toughest assignment in part because that’s what his father taught him: Do the best you can.

It’s a message that parents often tell their children but one that Yarborough has taken almost to an extreme. It has even more meaning now after his father Bill, 56, died after battling cancer on Aug. 1.

“He’s a very driven guy,” Navy quarterback Ricky Dobbs said. “And he’s had to go through a lot.”

The death of Yarborough’s father happened just a few days before Navy opened football practices. It’s affected him ever since.

“I play every single day on the field for him,” said Yarborough, a 22-year-old native of Columbia, S.C. “I talk to him every day, I miss him a lot. I try to use that as motivation to do the best I can because that’s all he ever asked for: to do the best I can. So that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s something he would ask and something I will continue to do for him.”

That kind of approach helped him start every game for the football team this year after getting just two starts in his career before that. He has a team-high six sacks this season.

“If you had a billboard for a Marine, it would be Billy,” Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “He’s as tough as nails.”

Growing up, Billy Yarborough assumed that military service was not optional but a requirement. That’s largely because father had served eight years in the Air Force. But even when he learned it wasn’t optional, he still wanted to join the Marines. He wasn’t fazed by harm’s way, wars and sacrifice.

“I wanted to be part of something that’s going to protect this way of life and spread it throughout the world the best way that we can and help others,” said Yarborough, whose immediate family includes his mother and an older and younger brother.


Yarborough is one of 24 seniors on the football team who learned their service assignments on Dec. 1. Eleven will be commissioned as Marine Corps officers, including Yarborough. A Navy spokeswoman said there has been increased interest in midshipmen joining the Marines after 9/11 and the start of the war in Iraq.

Yarborough will begin training in about a year in Quantico, Va. A more normal life must wait.

“People typically think of the Marine Corps as being in front of the line with a rifle in your hand,” Yarborough said. “That’s definitely probably the biggest part of it, and I would absolutely love to do something like that.”