KHS gridiron stars were destined for greater things ?
Kennedale football has had a lot of success of late and much has been made of the signing by Ohio State of Wildcat All-American Baron Browning who has a bright future before him. But, there have been others that have mined this path before, two in particular. {{more: Read More …}}
If you journey back two decades, you will find two Wildcats, Cedric James and Wes Bautovich, who made it to NCAA Division I success and then move on to the NFL.
The two were teammates and seniors on the 1997 Wildcat team, playing under head coach Tim Stout. Both were Kennedale standouts. That year, the Wildcats were district champs, finishing at 11-1-1, besting the previous record set by the 1985 Wildcats of 10-2 under Head Coach Dan Yokeley (Richard Barrett was an assistant in 1985 before moving on to Everman, Godley and then back to Kennedale). The Wildcats made it to the regional semifinals after defeating Kemp 27-0 and Frisco 8-7 before being overwhelmed by Daingerfield 27-0.superb athletes …
Current Head Baseball Coach, Paul Trantham, is the only coach still on the Kennedale staff from that 1997 team. He remembers those two as “superb athletes.?
Both were good at anything they tried. James lettered in four sports – football, basketball, baseball and track. But in his senior year when TCU, who had signed James for football, warned him against playing baseball Cedric skipped that season. However, he did play the other three sports, setting a school record in track that year.Bautovich excelled at football, basketball and baseball and in his final year, in addition to his success at football, he earned All-State honors as a baseball player for the Wildcats and played in the THSBCA All-Star game.
For James, it was off to TCU and the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). For Bautovich, it was a two year stint at Texas A&M at Kingsville and then a walk-on at Texas A&M. Both followed college with tours in the NFL.
an extremely steep path to climb ?
Of all the high schoolers playing football less than 3% get a chance to play Division I college ball. Of that number, a large number don?t get pass their freshman year. Of those who do make the team and impress less than 2% get drafted. And once a player makes the team the average expectancy of a pro-football player is only about 3.5 years.The NCAA paints a daunting picture for those athletes planning to go from the prep fields to the collegiate gridirons and then to the pros. Using 2017 figures, the NCAA gives the following statistics: www.ncaa.org
- Out of 1,083,373 high school football players nationwide only 6.8% will make it to play NCAA football including Division I, II and III.
- Only 2.6% will played at the Division I level where the overwhelming number of NFL draftee originate.
- Of the approximate total of 73,660 NCAA football players, sixteen thousand and three hundred sixty nine (16,369) NCAA football players were eligible for the NFL draft last year.
- Of the 16,369 eligible for the draft last year, 251 were drafted or 1.5%. Note: There were only NFL 253 draft positions available. There are other options available today, i.e. Canadian Football and Arena Football but when those are added the number drafted rises to only 1.9%.
While their routes to the pros were different, Bautovich and James climbed those peaks, making it, if only briefly.
Neither regrets it.
Up Next – Their stories from the Wildcats to the Pros.
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