SFHS Head Baseball Coach placed on administrative leave

BY JENNIFER CABRERA
ALACHUA, Fla. – An Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) representative has confirmed that Santa Fe High School Head Baseball Coach Travis Yeckring has been placed on administrative leave. Yeckring is also a Media Specialist at the high school.
ACPS does not release allegations until investigations are complete, but Florida Department of Law Enforcement officers were at Santa Fe High School today, and FDLE is reportedly conducting an investigation into crimes against children at the high school.
According to Yeckring’s bio from a previous coaching position, Yeckring was a first-team All-State infielder at Buchholz, a member of the 2009 Santa Fe College state championship team, and an assistant coach at Santa Fe College from August 2013 to August 2019. He has coached the Santa Fe High Raiders since 2020.
Efforts to reach Yeckring were unsuccessful because ACPS turned off his email address. FDLE’s Public Information Officer has not responded to our request for more information.
FDLE’s investigation is continuing, and anyone with information regarding any potential criminal activities related to the high school or the City of Alachua can contact FDLE’s Gainesville Field Office at (386) 462-9975.
And it begins
As a former Alachua County High School teacher and Coach, I must speak out. It’s very difficult to find anyone to do extra duties after school. Often you’re placed in situations where you are left alone with a student. 99.9% of the time that’s ok if you’re always the adult and the student or player fully understands that. It only takes one allegation to start an investigation that easily could be false. The problem is you are now tainted by that accusation forever. Please everyone take a breath and let this play out fully before making any judgments. If it’s proven true I would be the first to insist the full force of the law be used. We cannot have our children victimized by people they will always look up to.
Yes Fitz-to-B-Lewd let’s just leave the adult in place with the kids until we have absolute video proof of wrong doing. I would rather people over react to protect kids than under react, as you suggest, and allow the abuse to continue. Using the fox in the hin house theory I see.
You completely missed the point. Let the investigstion play out and don’t be so quick to judge guilt. If your wrong this person will never recover from it.
The person charged is on leave and no longer there. I’ve have seen a few of these before. Fantastic teachers were destroyed the ones you never want to lose but you probably don’t care.
This is very true Fitz the world is full of liars and gas lighters just look at our media. It was my bad I was just following the narrative of the media, which as you know, says all victims are to be believed regardless of the accusation. Well, that is of course, they are only believed if they are a liberal and hokey wokey. I am now on board with you and think these lying children should be ashamed for making the false accusations that they have. Your words of wisdom and your personal story of accusations against you has changed my mind about protecting the children, we are know on the same page.
The Tard^^ has spoken.
There have been issues with Santa Fe employees for a few weeks now.
Maybe they don’t like working or having jobs. Were they previously on public assistance that ran out? No wonder millions of border migrants are coming for their jobs 🧐🤔😳
And as of now, the baseball players’ parents have yet to be contacted or given any information from the district, the school, the athletic director, other coaches, or anyone. Finding out about this on facebook while the baseball team is currently at practice is concerning. And as an added bonus, the parent meeting previously scheduled for tonight was canceled today. Some sort of statement should have been provided to parents from the administration about the head coach being placed on leave. This is unacceptable, Santa Fe.
Well said, Concerned, and true!
As a fellow parent that’s involved with boosters, it’s definitely concerning that we’re all getting our information from social media and the news instead of the school and staff. It’s frustrating and scary. I hope that we’re all given answers and that anyone involved in any inappropriate behavior is removed from all contact with our youth. Ultimately, my only concern is for our boys.
What is the baseball equivalent of a fumble? I agree ACPS could have given you a heads up. Granted maybe the socials do move very, very fast. Now that it’s out there, they can at least do clean up to maybe fill in some blanks.
Multiple people have thought I made your comment. Based on our common likes of baseball and black baldy views, we should be buddies.
Same thing happened when former Buchholz Band Director Shawn Barat was placed on administrative leave when an accusation was made against him. The school/school board gave zero information to the school, parents, boosters or our children.
Even after the report came out, several months later, that Barat was credibly accused of grooming a student and breaking school board policies, they said nothing to our children. (Note: grooming is not a crime yet, and the student refused to have sexual contact with Barat so Barat wasn’t charged with a crime but was going to be terminated before he resigned. The good news is that Florida is working on legislation to make grooming a crime.)
Then the state board of education sent an investigator months later to interview band students. While Buchholz knew the investigator was coming, the students and parents weren’t warned and some were very upset.
The school board and school botched the handling of the Barat situation from the beginning. No counseling offered to the students, no discussions, nothing. Just silence after our children found out that the teacher they’d looked up to for years was a manipulative, lying groomer.
My point? Buckle up, Santa Fe High School parents. Your kids aren’t the concern of the school board. All they’re worried about is liability and your requests for information or assistance will be met with stone, cold silence.
Funny… St. Patrick is doing the same thing. Hushing kids and good Catholics are more worried about the reputation of the already tainted Catholic chirch (due to all of pedophilia in the past) and the school.
I agree with “concerned”. My son is also on the baseball team and we’ve heard nothing. I was hoping they would at least talk to the players at practice tonight. But they said nothing. This is completely unacceptable. Santa Fe baseball is more concerned about making hand over fist money and less about the kids or parent’s. Hardly any communication (unless of course it’s to tell the parents how much money they need to bring)
I know it’s “innocent until proven guilty”. And I believe in that. But you got to tell the parents something!!
Pathetic – see my comment above about how the school board handled a similar situation with the former band director at Buchholz, Shawn Barat.
You and your child will get no information, explanation, warning, empathy, concern or followup from your school or the school board.
They are so concerned with not getting sued by the teacher’s union that they just let the kids twist in the wind. It truly amplifies the harm of an already difficult situation.
Teacher’s Union cares less about the students than the school board.
The nea doesn’t care about guilt or innocence. Only money.
I think all of the baseball players parents need to get together & demand answers. I personally wouldn’t send my child to another practice until I knew what was going on. That’s not to punish the child but at this point I wouldn’t trust anyone at SFHS to protect my child, especially if they can’t tell parents what is going on when there’s a major investigation happening. They’re beyond failing these children & it’s an utter shame. There must be some serious allegations against this coach for FDLE to have gotten involved. If the investigation prove his innocence so be it but the FIRST priority should be the safety and wellbeing of the children. At this point this has happened far too often. There should never be one adult & one child alone together, to protect the child and the faculty member.
How do you know that they didn’t tell the parents what’s going on? They aren’t telling the public, but I’m sure that the parents are being told something
We know this because parents are the ones commenting. Parents of students and parents of his players were told absolutely nothing until around 12:36 tuesday when an email finally went out from the principal acknowledging Yeckring’s leave and the FDLE investigation. There was practice yesterday after the news articles were published and nothing was even mentioned to kids. Not even a simple “please don’t text or call Coach Yeckring for the time being”.
Several comments, herein, are from parents of SF athletes.
How can you be sure when parents of the baseball team players have commented on here saying they & their children know nothing…
Maybe High Springs and Alachua need to make their schools Public Charter schools. This is another fail on the part of SBAC to inform parents, proving they can not be trusted to do the right thing regardless the situation.
I just realized that this article ends with: “FDLE’s investigation is continuing, and anyone with information regarding any potential criminal activities related to the high school or the City of Alachua can contact FDLE’s Gainesville Field Office at (386) 462-9975.”
Why are they asking about potential criminal activity related to the City of Alachua?
Heinous crimes happen anywhere. With the internet penetrating every dark corner days, be on guard for the vulnerable.