Aug 12, 2004
By Marvin Pave, Globe Staff
WALTHAM -- Peter Yetten drives a pickup truck, loves to fish where the trout are biting, and enjoys coming home to his family after a hard day's work.
"I buy a newspaper in the morning, lunch at noon, and a beer after work, and then I do it again the next day," said Yetten, the only head varsity football coach Bentley College has had since the program moved into the NCAA ranks in 1988. "Bentley has been very good to me. My daughter just graduated there, and they've given me the opportunity to do what I like to do."
And he has done it quite well: Since 1979, Yetten's teams have gone 192-62-2, including three undefeated varsity regular seasons. The most recent was last year, when the team went 10-0 and made its first appearance in the NCAA Division 2 playoffs, when Bentley hosted powerhouse Grand Valley State University of Allendale, Mich.
Yetten, 56, is hoping to continue his winning tradition this fall. His 2004 team begins practice this Sunday on its new artificial-turf field.
Yetten, who grew up in Waltham and whose father, Ray, was his baseball coach at Waltham High, was an intense competitor as a three-sport athlete in high school and at Boston University, where he played on BU's first national championship hockey team in 1971. He still brings that hard-nosed approach to the football field, 26 years after taking a part-time job as a Bentley assistant coach on what was then a club football team.
"I remember my first football practice at Bentley. It was like looking at 'F-Troop,' a far cry from what it is today," said Yetten, referring to a TV comedy series about an inept cavalry unit. "I didn't think at the time it was going to be a long-term thing."
But from the time he wrote it in his yearbook as a high school senior, it was clear teaching and coaching were for him.
"That's all I ever wanted to be," said Yetten, a physical education teacher at Waltham High for three decades. "I was a kid who had to be pointed in the right direction. I had a temper, but I also had ability and a work ethic. Now when I see a kid a lot like me, I try to head him off at the pass a little. I'm an intense coach but I think a compassionate one, and I've never thrown a kid off one of my football teams."
Thom Boerman, Bentley's director of football operations and an assistant to Yetten for more than 20 years, has a standard line for prospective Bentley football players. "I always tell the young man, 'I don't know what your high school coach is like. But you'd better be prepared to get told, in loud and no uncertain terms, when you make a mistake or need correction.' But I have never heard him demean a player. He is never contrived; what you see is what you get."
T. Scott Connelly, Bentley's senior football captain from Franklin, calls Yetten "down to earth."
"There's no bull with him," Connelly said. "He looks you straight in the eye, and you know you have to go out and earn his respect. But once you do, he's always there for you. He reminds us of how far the program has come from the days when they were a club team with no practice field and had to get out of the way of soccer balls."
Connelly, a linebacker who was second on the team with 62 tackles last year, said Yetten's guard is never down. During practices, no matter what the drill, he said, Yetten's fist is usually clenched -- a sign of his determination.
"Peter was a tremendous motivator," recalled Kevin Lucey, a Bentley Athletic Hall of Famer and the team's first varsity quarterback 16 years ago out of Wakefield High. "He had complete hold of our team and an uncanny knack of, by Wednesday or Thursday, building you up emotionally for Saturday's game. By Friday, you'd be so fired up, you were ready to pounce on your little brother."
Lucey said Yetten would tell the Bentley squad that "the other team was coming in to get the little Bentley accountants with their pocket protectors, and he made you believe it."
Connelly said the accountants line is still employed.
"He had a temper," Lucey said, "but he also had everybody's attention, and he's the constant for that program."
Yetten's teams have usually been up to the challenge: The 1988 team had a 5-2-1 record as an NCAA Division 3 entry and won its first varsity game, 63-26, over Brooklyn College. In 1993, its first year as a Division 2 football team, the Falcons were 10-0, and they followed that up a year later with an 11-0 season. Bentley's record as a varsity team is 121-41-1.
"I've learned a ton from him," said former Bentley assistant and current Merrimack College head coach Jim Murphy. "He was a great athlete in his own right and a fiery competitor, and now his record speaks for itself. His teams aren't the biggest around, but they are always built on speed and toughness, and I try to focus and drive my players at Merrimack like Peter does at Bentley."
"I know this," Murphy continued. "After one of his 15-minute locker-room speeches, you've got kids who want to run through a brick wall for him."
Yetten is a familiar name in Waltham, which has supplied a steady stream of athletes to Bentley. Ray Yetten, who is now 87 and resides in South Harwich, spent more than 25 years in the Waltham system as a chemistry teacher, head baseball coach, and assistant football coach. Peter's brother, Ned, was a standout baseball and hockey player who went on to play goalie on the Boston College hockey team. Another brother, Christopher, was a three-sport athlete at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Their mother, Barbara, who died 25 years ago, was on the Waltham school board. And Waltham High's baseball field is named for Ray and Barbara Yetten.
It's been a while since Yetten was at BU, but his old teammates, including current BU hockey coach Jack Parker, still follow his career.
His hockey coach, Jack Kelley, now retired and living half the year in Maine, says the first thing he does on Sundays in the fall is pick up the sports section to see how Bentley fared on the gridiron.
"I've followed Peter's career with much interest," Kelley said. "He came to BU on a football scholarship, but I'm sure glad he played hockey for me.
"He was an intense and dedicated player who didn't take it easy on anyone physically at practice. And he was like a coach on the ice," Kelly said. "You'd try to get something across to the team, and Peter was usually the first to grasp it."
Yetten and his father were coached in football by the late Hal Kopp, a great college coach who mentored Ray at Northeastern University in the late 1930s and was head coach at Waltham High in the late '60s, when Peter was his quarterback.
Kopp went on to start the club program at Bentley.
"I had no aspirations to be a head football coach," said Yetten, whose wife, Susan, teaches fifth grade in Westford, where they've lived for 19 years. The couple have three children. "I thought I'd make a few extra bucks and have fun, but it's turned into a great run.
"I work hard, my assistants work hard, and my players work hard. We'll always be in great shape and well-prepared, and we'll keep playing until the final whistle blows no matter what the score. And then we'll wind it down and start over again."
Indeed, after Bentley was defeated by Grand Valley State to end its 2003 season, Yetten thanked his team for a great year and for what they had done for Bentley football.
The Falcons scored 36 points in that loss, impressive because Grand Valley State didn't allow a point in its next three playoff games.
"People often ask if I could have coached at a higher level," Yetten said. "And I probably could have. But this is where I want to be, teaching and coaching in my hometown. I've fulfilled my ambition."
