Riverview alum Yates named new head coach
By Jarrett Guthrie, Editor
RIVERVIEW – Riverview alum and former assistant coach Matthew Yates has been named the Sharks new baseball head coach.
Yates, a 2017 Riverview grad who played collegiately at Greensboro College (NCAA Division III), confirmed his hiring on Thursday and held a brief parent meeting that evening.
“It is a great privilege to take over the program, especially after playing and coaching here,” Yates said. “I have a lot of history with this program and I’m really hoping to turn it around and bring it back to the level of where it was when I was playing here.”
As a player with the Sharks, Yates was a right-handed pitcher who tossed 75 2/3 innings across his three varsity seasons with 59 strikeouts and a 2.13 ERA. In his senior season Riverview finished 20-7 winning its last district title.
Since that season, Riverview has had seven coaching changes and only two winning seasons (2018 & 2019) – something Yates discussed when he spoke with 813Preps, saying he realizes he will have to first build trust among the returning players – including a senior class that will have its third high school coach.
“The one thing I’ve preached to everyone I’ve talked to, is that we need consistency,” he said. “There has been a lot of trust broken between the players, parents and the program right now. It’s about being consistent day-in, day-out and I plan to be here as long as I can. Being my alma mater, I have connections here and it is a place I truly want to be.”
Yates served as an assistant coach at RVHS from 2021-23, before spending a year each as an assistant at Armwood (’24) and Sumner (’25).
“We’ve had a lot of great players come through, including a couple of guys I played with who have had the opportunity to play (at) the Major League level (Jordan Leasure and Freddy Tarnok),” he said. “I want to bring back the kind of expectations that were around when I was playing.”
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Yates is a fourth-grade teacher at Riverview Elementary and lives in Brandon with his wife.
Asked what he hopes to quickly address, Yates said that he plans to start with challenging his players’ expectations and hopes to build a winning attitude at practice and watching as that translates to gameplay.
“(My first goal) is a mindset change,” he said. “Expectations here have fallen since I played here and I want to raise those expectations, and that starts with what our players are expecting from themselves. I want them to expect more from themselves and not less from themselves … once the mindset starts to change, I expect everything else to fall in line.”
Yates takes over for fellow Sharks alum Garrett Thompson, who resigned at the beginning of November.
