“He drops passes,” came the call up to the stands where University City High School lacrosse midfielder Austin Watkins is being interviewed. “Who was that?” a reporter asked. “Probably Wyatt Tucker,” Watkins said of his fellow senior. Does the scrimmage against the team from Colorado count on your record? “No,” interjected another teammate. All in the name of good team camaraderie and ribbing. “I’m the one that gets messed with the most,” said Watkins, 17, a defense middie. You can tell he’s taking it good-naturedly. This often happens during interviews. Teammates and coaches grin, make catcalls, even stare up from the sidelines, just to let the subject know he is not forgotten. Watkins seems game. A veteran of the UC varsity since he was a sophomore, “I’ve spent three years playing defense” as a reason for his standing as a starter for Coach Chet Zygmont. He has been increasing his skills and fitting into the Centurions’ plan. In their season opener, the blue and white defeated the Mira Mesa Marauders 8-1 after taking a 16-4 drubbing last year. “It was a fun game,” said Watkins. “As a team, we have to work together,” he added. “We have to collaborate to score, because we don’t have one big star.” Things were a little rougher in a subsequent match against La Jolla High School. “They’re really good,” he said. An upcoming scrimmage “will help us see how a really good team plays” and what improvements to work on. In the La Jolla match, the SDSU-bound Watkins saw a Viking player hit one of his teammates, who apparently suffered a concussion. It hit at the nexus of Watkins’ interest in studying in the medical field in the future. “Hit lower,” he advised. He added that he suffered a concussion in football, which he also plays at UC, and another in lacrosse. Watkins works at Aqua Pros, a program “inside the Boys and Girls Club” in Clairemont, where he lives. The job combines his desire to work with people and his enjoyment of children and the opportunity to help children with autism. His involvement has helped interest him in research in genetics to discover the connection between genetics and autism. San Diego State, Watkins said, was a nice choice for college – “I wanted to stay local.” Meanwhile, he would like to play lacrosse for the university’s team. He may transfer later in his college years because he is considering the medical field and also marine biology. Older brother Liam got Watkins into lacrosse. “It’s an awesome sport,” Watkins said. “My brother played varsity four years. He scored 75 goals his senior year at UC (and) in the 50s his junior year. I’m nowhere near as good as him.” But Watkins still thrives on the sport enough to want to continue playing into college. He said his parents, Kimberly and Rick Yeater, “are really religious and really into fitness. Those two things combine to influence me. They’ve instilled good moral values into me. My mom is into boot camps. That (workout emphasis) helps me a lot in lacrosse.” Watkins loves sushi and Mexican food. “I like ahi, fresh fish,” he said. “I love spearfishing. I get fish all the time. I haven’t had sushi in a while. This is giving me sushi withdrawals, talking about this,” he laughed. A California burrito satisfies the palette. The carne asada fries, a San Diego favorite, are good at a venue near his home.
A fighter plane goes by during the conversation. Austin recounted how, as a student at Standley Middle School, he and his classmates saw the 2008 crash of the fighter jet near the high school campus. “It was smoking,” he said. “We saw the pilot eject. We didn’t know what happened. Then you found out later that it crashed into a home” in which the occupants were killed.
If he were to train medically, he would be involved in situations in which people are injured. He considered the question logically: “There weren’t any people who were injured and survived in that situation. But EMTs would be responding to the call; others would be needed.” He’s not only a caring person but one who could keep a level head under pressure.
