Draughn assistant Yambor named new Freedom baseball coach

Freedom High School hopes that Shawn Yambor is the man who can turn its baseball program around, with school administration recently naming Yambor its new head coach.

Yambor becomes the Patriots’ third different head coach this decade following Clint Zimmerman’s move from head of the baseball program to boys basketball.

He takes over for Tyler Hackett, whose Freedom teams posted a 24-70 overall record in four seasons, including a 1-39 mark in the rugged Northwestern Conference. Hackett is expected to remain at Freedom in his teaching role.

“First of all, I, and all of Freedom High, should thank Coach Hackett for his time as the head baseball coach,” FHS athletic director Rob Scott said. “Coaching baseball, when considering field maintenance as well, is a tremendous time commitment, and Coach Hackett made sacrifices of his personal time to coach our student-athletes. He has also served in several other coaching roles for us here as well as teaching in our social studies department.

“We are excited about what Coach Yambor brings to us to continue moving our baseball program in a positive direction. He has spent a great deal of time coaching at various levels and has a commitment to both individual and program overall improvement. He is well-respected in the baseball community and can open new doors for our student-athletes in the Freedom community. He is quickly beginning to embed himself in our school community as well.”

Yambor spent the past three seasons as varsity pitching coach and head JV coach at Draughn after coaching at Heritage Middle School for the three seasons prior to that.

He played the sport at nearby Foard High School, graduating in 1994, as well as collegiately at both Wilkes Community College and Mars Hill University. Yambor has coached for nearly 30 years on the diamond in some capacity spanning the high school, middle school, travel, and recreation levels, and is a former youth teams director with the Athlete’s Lab travel organization out of Catawba County.

His son, Chase, is a rising senior pitcher and shortstop who will likely play for him next season at FHS. The addition of the younger Yambor would give Freedom five returning players who were recently named to the All-Burke County team in 2026, joining rising seniors Alex Wall, Luke Miller, and Zaydrin Hausley as well as rising junior Puckett Hudson.

“With me being in the travel ball world for a little while, I’ve coached a lot of those guys along the way, and I’m very familiar with a lot of the kids over there,” Yambor said. “With the amount of arms there now, I think we can have a very good pitching staff. That puts us in a good position.”

Freedom’s last winning season in the sport was 2019, though that did cap a four-year stretch during which the Patriots finished .500 or better overall three times. Freedom reached the NCHSAA 6A state playoffs last month, reaching the postseason for just the third time since 2009 but failing to secure its first playoff win since 2001.

“One of the things I was really excited about was getting into that conference,” Yambor said. “Being a competitor and wanting to see the best, three of the top eight teams in the state are in our conference.

“And when I met with the players and parents, I told them, ‘In order to be the man, you’ve got to beat the man.’ That’s the state we’re in right now, and it’s time that Freedom baseball is not the little brother anymore.”

EB’s Robinson, Draughn’s Shehan both retiring

East Burke High School last week announced that former long-time swimming coach T.R. Robinson is retiring from his teaching career, several years after hanging it up from coaching, while Draughn High School will be looking for a new athletic director after announcing that Eric Shehan is retiring.

Robinson is a 2008 East Burke Athletics Hall of Fame inductee after building the Cavaliers into a powerhouse in the pool. He guided the EB boys and girls swim programs to seven conference championships and was an eight-time conference coach of the year who coached six different EB boys conference swimmers of the year.

He then coached Draughn’s swim teams to both boys and girls league titles in the early 2010s, returned for a second stint with EBHS swimming from 2015-18, and ended his coaching career with Patton swimming from 2019-21. Additionally, Robinson also coached tennis and golf at EBHS.

Meanwhile, Shehan had served as Draughn’s athletic director for five years from 2021-26. Previously, the Freedom graduate had coached football, baseball, and lacrosse at Patton for nine years.