Al Yarr, coach 'driven by making young people better,' dead at 89

Al Yarr, a head coach at Dalhousie University for four decades, died in hospital in Halifax on May 26. He was 89.

Born Alan David Yarr in Victoria on May 1, 1934, he joined the air force as a young man and was based at CFB Greenwood. While there, according to his obituary, he met his first wife, Rosemary, which "set him up for life as an East Coaster."

Yarr started his career at Dalhousie in 1963, coaching the men's basketball team. A few years later he expanded his coaching to cross-country and track and field. 

The website for the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame says he led the Dalhousie Tigers to 60 Atlantic Universities Athletics Association (AUAA) conference championships.

Yarr received many AUAA coach-of-the-year awards for cross-country and track, the site says, and was Dalhousie coach of the year in 1987.

He was head coach for the Canadian women's cross-country team at the world championships in Belgium in 1991.

Bruce Rainnie, the CEO of the Nova Scotia Hall of Fame, says the fact Yarr continued his involvement in coaching after officially retiring in 1999 was a testament to his love and passion for sports.

Rainnie says the last time he saw Yarr was in April at the Dalhousie Black and Gold Athletics Awards.

An eye for detail

Rainnie says Yarr was always constructive and had an eye for detail, which helped athletes improve.

"He was driven by making young people better," he says.

"You can honestly say with him ... that sport, and in particular track and field, cross-country and to an extent basketball, they're all better in this province because of Al Yarr. He made that big a difference over that many years."

Rainnie says Yarr found something that he loved and totally immersed himself in it. He was always looking to help others get to the finish line, whether that was in a race, a university course or in life.

Love of athletics

Rick Plato, head coach of the Dalhousie Tigers men's basketball team, says the fact that Yarr was able to coach three sports at the university level "speaks volumes"  about his expertise and love of athletics.

"He coached a long time and a variety of different sports," Plato says.

"When you talk Dalhousie athletics, particularly cross-country and track, Yarr's name is pretty synonymous with that."

Sandy Pirie, a former Dalhousie physical education student who was a student athlete in cross-country and track and field from 1984 to 1989, says Yarr was his coach and teacher.

Yarr wasn't the type of person who stood at the finish line cheering on athletes, Pirie says.

"He would be running all over the place cheering them on and going to different points and giving them little motivational things to think about through the race," he says.

Pirie says there are other schools in Atlantic Canada that have good distance programs. But in the 1980s, Dalhousie was the school you had to go to if you were a distance runner.

Part of the reason for that, Pirie says, was Yarr's work in recruiting athletes to the university.

"He was just a very kind man and he did a lot for his athletes."

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