Meet Yazmine Beverly, South Mecklenburg’s homecoming queen and football player
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- South Mecklenburg senior Yazmine Beverly won homecoming and played nose guard.
- Coach Joe Evans recruited Beverly to defensive line; she appeared in ten plays.
- Beverly balances athletics and academics with track scholarships and 3.9 GPA.
Everybody likes Yazmine.
It’s early Friday morning at South Mecklenburg, and Sabres’ homecoming queen Yazmine Beverly, a nose guard on the school’s 5-1 football team, is in the weight room with some of her teammates.
She is laughing with them, having a good time, but she’s working, too.
When she walks out into the school’s lobby, people wave and smile, like they always do, and then Beverly sits a high-top table and begins to tell her story.
She talks about how she might’ve become the first female varsity football player in Mecklenburg County history to play a position other than kicker; about how she became a college recruited track star; about the shock around being named homecoming queen last month; and about how all of these last few weeks have been something she’ll remember for a lifetime.
“I’ve had many family members, girls-wise, play football,” Beverly said. “I’m from Mississippi and it’s normal for girls there to join the football team. Plus, the majority of my family is all boys, so like growing up, it’s just football this and football that.”
Still, it took a little bit of convincing — well, a lot of convincing from Sabres’ coach Joe Evans — to get Beverly to join the team.
“I’ve known Yaz for a couple years now,” Evans said, “and I saw her in the spring and said, ‘Hey why don’t you come out for football?’ She was wrestling and having a tough time making weight and I said, ‘There’s no weight limit in football. Just come play.’”
Beverly asked what position.
Evans said defensive line.
“It’s the easiest position to learn as a senior,” he said. “She was on the track team in the spring, but the first day of summer workouts, she showed up with her paperwork all done, and I’m like, ‘Let’s go.’”
The wrestling thing and the track thing
Beverly has been on the wrestling team since she got to South Mecklenburg, but was never been able to wrestle in a match because she was too heavy.
“Playing football really doesn’t hurt that much,” she said, “because with wrestling, we have a thing called true heavyweights. They actually weigh 285 (pounds) and you can feel it (in practice). They will sit on top of you and force you try to get up. That brings a lot of strength out of you and makes you push through. Football is the same thing, different mentality.”
One time, South Meck had a scrimmage wrestling match set up for Beverly, to finally give her a chance to wrestle a girl, but her opponent saw how big she was, and, as Beverly said, “the girl backed out.”
Beverly smiles as she tells the story.
Honestly, she smiles as she tells any story.
Evans, the football coach, called her “eternally happy” or “phenomenal” 13 times in a six-minute interview.
“My first year joining (wrestling),” Beverly said, “I was the only girl and they were like you gotta get down to 235 (pounds). I was like, ‘We’re going to try.’ So I’ve been on the team and never wrestled. I just work out, and last year, we had a lot more girls join the team and I’m team captain and team manager. It’s frustrating (to not be able to participate) but it’s also very fun because I get to be there and hype everybody up, and depending on the meet, I can help coach.”
Besides wrestling, Beverly has thrown the shot put on the track team. Last May, she finished ninth in the N.C. 4A Western Regional championships and has earned scholarships offers from UNC-Greensboro and N.C. A&T.
A 3.9 GPA student, Beverly will start taking college level classes next semester, when she’s signed up to become a nurse’s aide. She wants to major in business, to pursue her love of analytics and logistics.
“I’m really good with numbers,” she said.
And there’s that big smile again.
“I don’t know why I smile all the time,” she said. “You can’t be sad all your life. Gotta live it up.”
The history-making homecoming queen
Beverly didn’t play in South Mecklenburg’s first four football games this season, and heading into the fifth — a homecoming game Sept. 19 against East Mecklenburg — she was heavily involved in halftime planning, due to her roles on the Black student union and South Mecklenburg’s student government team.
In the back of his mind, though, Evans wanted to make sure Beverly got to play in this game. She’d been at every practice and done everything asked of her.
Evans said she’d become a team favorite.
“I’ve known Yazmine for a few years now,” Sabres junior lineman Ames Oliver said. “I learned before the summer that she was going to play football. I was a little shocked, but I was excited to play with her because it brought a new dynamic to the team. It’s pretty rare to see a girl playing football.”
In those first few weeks, Oliver said he never heard a word from players on the other teams about the girl wearing No. 95.
“Just being with her, she’s very, very uplifting,” Oliver said. “She’s always ready to work and be there and play football. She’s always hyping us up on the sideline, no matter what the score is. She’s there to work and bring up the team.”
Before the homecoming game, which turned out to be a 45-8 win over East Meck, one of South Meck’s assistant principals grabbed Evans as the team was coming onto the field for warmups.
Don’t you tell a soul, but Yazmine won homecoming queen.
Evans contained his emotions and went about his business. At halftime, the team was gathered together just outside the stadium and talking amongst themselves. Beverly, being on homecoming court, was on the field.
“I’m heard them say over the speaker, ‘And your 2025-26 homecoming queen is,’” Evans said.
He holds his hands in front of him, like an usher asking people to stop moving.
“I’m like, ‘Wait, listen!’” Evans said. “They say Yazmine’s name and the boys go crazy.’”
Not the first girl to tackle or play
For many years, girls have played high school football in Charlotte and throughout North Carolina.
Ten years ago, for example, Evans was coaching at Ardrey Kell when a burned out girls’ soccer player, Sydney Frankel, asked him how he felt about girls on the football team.
“I said, ‘If you can kick, you can kick,’” Evans said. “She said, ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m a girl?’ I said, ‘If you can kick, you can kick.’”
Frankel played several years at Ardrey Kell and eventually tried to walk on at Mississippi State.
Five years ago, Sydney McCorkle played kicker for Providence Day and broke the gender barrier for N.C. private school football. And in 2021, Chapel Hill High’s Brooklyn Harker started at defensive back and got in on two tackles in a 55-6 win over Carrboro.
Providence Day coach Chad Grier played quarterback at East Carolina. His son, Will, is an NFL quarterback with the Cowboys.
Grier said he’s seen a lot in football, and McCorkle was the first girl he’d ever coached. But Grier said he had never heard then of a girl, like Brooklyn Harker, playing an on-field position.
Until he heard about Yazmine Beverly Thursday afternoon, he still hadn’t.
“I’m sure it’s happened somewhere, but, man, that’s pretty exceptional,” Grier said. “It’s just a hugely positive thing. We don’t live in the same world we lived in 20 years ago or 50 years ago. We talk about inclusion in every walk of life. If she’s good enough to play, play. Good for her.”
Hitting the field, creating a memory
When the PA announcer called Beverly’s name as homecoming queen, she couldn’t see or hear her teammates going crazy.
She couldn’t believe it herself.
“It was very surprising,” she said. “In my mind, I was thinking, ‘One person might win and it’s OK, I can run for prom queen. It doesn’t matter.’ But once they announced my name, I was in disbelief. I was like, ‘Oh, wow.’”
That wouldn’t be the only surprise she would get that night.
Evans was determined to get her into the game, and according to available Observer records, no girls’ varsity player has ever played for a Mecklenburg County school at any position other than kicker.
“I went down at halftime and said, ‘Make sure Yaz gets in the game. I want her in the game,’” Evans said. “This needed to be a great story for her. She was willing in her junior year to let me talk her into playing football. That’s a hard step. She didn’t back down.”
Evans remembers a female player on the JV team at Harding once, but none on the varsity team. So when Beverly played 10 plays against East Mecklenburg, a memorable day became even moreso. And likely historic.
“It was a cool experience,” Evans said. “She won homecoming queen at halftime and in the second half, she goes into the game. Who’s got a better story than that? Who can say that, ‘Oh, I won homecoming queen and I played nose guard the second half, too?’”
Well, Yazmine Beverly can tell that story, and she’ll tell it with that same big smile that she has every time she tells any story.
“Ten years from now,” she said, “it will be awesome to just think about, ‘Oh, I was on the football team at one point in my life.’ That’s a very exciting thing to say, especially as a girl. And I’m not just a kicker. I’m a defensive linemen, a nose guard.”
This story was originally published October 3, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
