As The Star honors its 2020 Scholar-Athletes, we check in with our winners from 2010
Each year, as we honor the KC Star’s Scholar-Athlete high school award-winners (this year’s overall boys and overall girls champs, as well as each of our 100-plus school-by-school finalists, will be unveiled Sunday morning), we also check in with the top kids from 10 years back.
This week we caught up with our boys and girls KC Star Scholar-Athletes from 2010 — Roy Wedge, a former Lawrence High standout, and Megan Yohe, who starred at Liberty High — to see what they’re up to nowadays.
In short: cool stuff.
Read on ...
Megan Yohe
Liberty H.S. runner
Residence: Dallas
Currently: Yohe, 27, is a fifth-grade teacher and high school track coach at The Covenant School, a small K-12 institution in Dallas. She’s just put the finishing touches on a most unique schoolyear, with classes conducted via video calls and other online means because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The outbreak became an issue shortly before Covenant’s spring break; Yohe’s 14 students and the rest of the kids at the school, like most others across the country, completed the remainder of their coursework at home via computers. “It’s worked out as best as it could’ve during this time, but it was not the ideal scenario,” Yohe said.
Family: The youngest of three children, Yohe has two older brothers — one works in finance in Dallas after attending TCU and the other is stationed in Shreveport, about three hours away, in the Air Force. The siblings and their mom, Karin, endured a scare this spring when dad Kent, 57, tested positive for COVID-19. He spent about two weeks in the hospital. He has since recovered and no one else in the family has contracted the illness. “We are very grateful,” Megan said.
High school: Yohe graduated among the top students in her senior class of 695 at Liberty and was one of the top runners in Missouri. She was a valedictorian and a state medalist cross country and track. Her coach at the time, Quinn Vermie, summed up her academic and athletic success then in four words: “Passion. Drive. Commitment. Confidence.”
“I look back on it very fondly,” Yohe said of her time at Liberty High. “I’m grateful for the influence of my coaches, the community in Liberty, my friends and my church. I had constant encouragement and support through high school, and that gave me a good foundation for life.”
College: After high school, Yohe attended and competed at Vanderbilt on an athletic scholarship, graduating with a degree in elementary education. “I really liked being in Nashville and competing in the SEC,” she said. “I felt challenged by it, but I really enjoyed being somewhere new.”
Sports now: Yohe still runs with friends during the week and has participated “in a couple of marathons,” so athletic pursuits remain a vital part of her life. Along with coaching the high school team at Covenant, she’s started a fifth-grade running club. She said she likes introducing running to young people, noting that until junior high, her sports of choice were soccer and tennis — so “it’s never too late” to try something new. “I enjoy getting to share my passion with high schoolers,” she said, “and it’s fun seeing (the fifth-graders) get out and do something they’re not familiar with.”
We’ll add one more trait to those shared a decade ago by Vermie, Yohe’s former coach: humility. After we spoke with Yohe, her mom texted to note that Megan has run more than just “a couple of marathons”: She’s competed in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., and she also ran the prestigious Boston Marathon the past two years. She was set to take part in Boston again this spring until the pandemic forced its postponement and, ultimately, cancellation.
Roy Wedge
Lawrence H.S. runner
Residence: Boston
Currently: Before we get into what Roy’s up to these days, please indulge a couple of highlights from 2010 to help explain who this young man was at the time of his graduation ... and who he’d become.
The son of a KU professor and schoolteacher, Wedge was a national merit finalist and Kansas AP Scholar who sported a 4.065 GPA and scored a 35 on his ACT. He’d helped the LHS orchestras achieve top ratings at state and finished third in the state chess championships. He placed second at the Kansas Class 6A cross-country meet as a junior, then won it as a senior. Along the way, he inspired a Facebook fan club bearing this description: “From expert violist to king of cross country, Roy Wedge has graced the halls of LHS from his arrival, and hasn’t stopped impressing everyone since then. We all know that Roy is pretty much the coolest guy around, so why not show it?”
Today, at 27, Wedge is a cool guy in Boston, his headquarters since leaving Lawrence to compete at MIT. He manages a software team for a company called Alteryx and makes his home in the Cambridge area.
“I like it,” he said of Boston. “It’s definitely a larger city than Lawrence, but it doesn’t feel too big like, say, Manhattan.”
Family: Wedge is single, no kids. His dad, Phillip, still teaches at KU; his mom, Linda, has retired from teaching and works as a receptionist. He has one younger brother.
High school: We’ve already run through some of Wedge’s high school plaudits, but here’s one more: His accolades were more than just individual. He helped his team to back-to-back state cross-country titles at nearby Rim Rock Farm. His general selflessness prompted this from Lucy Daldorph, Wedge’s prom date, in 2010: “He makes his own category, honestly. We had to do something in my English class about what makes a man, what qualities define a man, and two or three times Roy Wedge was the list of what you have do to be a man.”
Of his time at Lawrence High, Wedge says simply, “I had a lot of great people, teachers and coaches to work with and grow with. I’m happy to have been where I was.”
College: Wedge studied computer science at MIT and also ran cross country. The team’s home course was nearby Franklin Park, the site of recent racial-injustice protests. Wedge follows the news on a Boston subreddit but says he mostly stays in his apartment at the moment, working from home amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He has co-authored five computer science papers, most recently, “Solving the False Positives Problem in Fraud Prediction Using Automated Feature Engineering” in 2018, and presented at a conference in Tokyo.
Sports now: Wedge has run four marathons since MIT, including Boston twice and Chicago, but says he hasn’t run much lately because he’s been dealing with a tendon issue in one of his Achilles. “There are rehab exercises you can do to improve it, but you need to actually do those exercises,” he noted. “I’d been working on it pretty frequently until mid-March.” He still follows sports, though, including his Jayhawks and the Minnesota Twins — his dad is originally from Minneapolis and Roy inherited his fandom. “I still have fond memories of seeing Torii Hunter steal a home run at Kauffman Stadium,” he said with a chuckle.
Previous boys winners
1984: Danny Bellus, Washington
1985: Marlon Washington, Schlagle
1986: Brad Hinkle, Olathe South
1987: Jeff Witkop, Blue Valley North
1988: Jeff Drbohlav, Cass-Midway
1989: Tom Kreamer, SM East
1990: Shaon Fry, Oak Grove
1991: Aaron Hodges, Harmon
1992: Mike Wilson, Center
1993: Nate Minnis, Blue Springs
1994: Matt Mendlick, Olathe South
1995: Steve Fein, SM Northwest
1996: Josh Alpers, Blue Springs
1997: Brandon Wier, Olathe North
1998: Daniel Parris, Lee’s Summit North
1999: Corey Crandall, Fort Osage
2000: Tommy Hottovy, Park Hill South
2001: Jeff Durbin, Olathe South
2002: Justin Dyer, Olathe South
2003: Adam Perkins, Liberty
2004: Larry Hall, Center
2005: Louis Caputo, Blue Springs
2006: Aaron Trigg, Blue Valley West
2007: Scott O’Donnell, Oak Park
2008: Riley Reynolds, Blue Springs South
2009: Rick Settle, Olathe East
2010: Roy Wedge, Lawrence
2011: Aaron Thornburg, SM Northwest
2012: Zach Herriott, Rockhurst
2013: Nathan Butler, Leavenworth
2014: Sam Guinn, Blue Valley Northwest
2015: Dalton Schoen, Blue Valley Northwest
2016: Jacob Bohlken, Smithville
2017: Jacob Boyd, Smithville
2018: Jacob Sykes, Rockhurst
2019: Alex Totta, Blue Valley
2020: To be announced Sunday ... stay tuned!
Previous girls winners
1984: Suzanne Meyer, Center
1985: Angela Cox, Olathe North
1986: Gretchen Prather, Liberty
1987: Tricia Lillygren, Raytown South
1988: Lisa Arel, Lee’s Summit
1989: Melanie Ornes, Lee’s Summit
1990: Amy Fowler, Bishop Miege
1991: Amy Cook, Lansing
1992: Angie Popek, SM Northwest
1993: Lisa Petty, Lawson
1994: Lisa Davies, Oak Grove
1995: Lindsay Thornton, SM West
1996: Kelly Andra, SM Northwest
1997: Elizabeth Baker, Pembroke Hill
1998: Lauren Jackson, North Kansas City
1999: Andrea Tietjen, Excelsior Springs
2000: Katherine Hoffman, Notre Dame de Sion
2001: Shea Swoboda, Winnetonka
2002: Jill Tyner, St. Pius X
2003: Tegan Stuart, Raymore-Peculiar
2004: Toni Picerno, Lee’s Summit
2005: Katie Martincich, Bishop Miege
2006: Erin Birmingham, Park Hill South
2007: Ali Pistora, Tonganoxie
2008: Allison Mayfield, St. Thomas Aquinas
2009: Morgan Johnson, Platte County
2010: Megan Yohe, Liberty
2011: Alexandra Keane, Notre Dame de Sion
2012: Lexie Oak, St. Pius X
2013: Cassie Wait, Gardner-Edgerton
2014: Arianna Person, St. James Academy
2015: Dorian Bailey, St. Teresa’s
2016: Jenna Gray, St. James Academy
2017: Carlie Queen, Summit Christian Academy
2018: Kate Walsworth, Barstow
2019: Alana Vawter, Staley
2020: To be announced Sunday ... stay tuned!
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 5:00 AM.