Before Parkville’s football team kicks off its first home game Sept. 12 against Lansdowne, the Knights will rename their football field Yates Field in honor of Joseph Anthony Yates, Sr., Baltimore County’s first African-American football coach.

Yates, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 83, was the Knights' head football coach from 1971-1981, but he had a lasting impact on the community and the young people he taught and coached. The dedication will take place Saturday, Sept. 12 at 12:30 p.m.

The legacy of Yates is not about coaching but character, said Ron Belinko, coordinator of athletics for Baltimore County, who coached football at Overlea at the time.

"The significance of Joe Yates in the community is the impact that he made on an almost totally white school. Color was overlooked when it came to Joe Yates. They looked and saw the character of the man and what he was teaching young people and how they responded to him," said Belinko, who coached against Yates in one of the county's biggest rivalries.

Yates came to Baltimore County in 1952 to teach at the Banneker School in Catonsville, according to his obituary that appeared in The Baltimore Sun on Jan. 27, 2006. He also taught at Sollers Point Junior-Senior High School and at Catonsville High before moving to Parkville High.

"That was at a time when he was one of maybe two African Americans in the whole building," Belinko said. "In the early 70s when Joe coached and the respect that he got from the Parkville community, you have to understand the demographics at the time. Probably for many of the students at Parkville, it was the first experience that they had with an African-American male that they all responded to and respected and looked to as a father figure."

Sun reporter Frederick Rasmussen, who wrote The Sun obituary, included a quote from Yates that appeared in the Parkville Reporter during the 1980s, stating that only four blacks were teaching physical education in the county at that time.

Rasmussen also included this quote from former Parkville assistant football coach Bob McCubbin: "Joe knew no color differential. He didn't want to be regarded as a black coach but rather as a person and a human being. He never made color an issue and never discussed it. He was very well accepted at Parkville and there were never any overt actions against him in classes or during games."

Belinko said Yates did not have great success as a football coach at Parkville, but that the honor of having the field named for him shows that his impact transcended football.

"At Parkville, they never had an outstanding record," Belinko said. "It wasn’t that he was coach of the year, it wasn’t that he won championships, it’s the fact that this stadium is being named after him for the character that he showed and for the role model he was for young people that he taught and coached. That’s a tremendous testament. That community and the graduates who still live in that community had that much respect for the man."

Yates certainly personified what coaching high school sports should be all about.

Handout photo of Joseph Anthony Yates Sr.