After a major league career that consisted of one inning pitched for the 1926 Philadelphia Phillies, Rusty Yarnall embarked on a 45-year career as a teacher, athletic coach, and administrator at Lowell Textile Institute, now part of the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
In September 1927, Yarnall assumed his first coaching position at Lowell Textile, taking over the football team. In the winter of 1927-28 he coached the basketball team, and, in the spring, he succeeded Joe Duffy as baseball coach. Yarnall coached football and basketball at Lowell Textile until 1948, but his real love was baseball; he coached the team for nearly 40 years (with time out for military service in World War II) until his final season in 1966.
Yarnall concentrated on coaching his three teams at Lowell Textile and a variety of semipro assignments. In 1935, Yarnall also made progress in his teaching career when he was added to the faculty at Lowell Textile to teach economics.
World War II interrupted Yarnall's teaching and coaching careers, as he served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1946, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander.
When he returned to Lowell Textile after the war, he coached three sports for only a few more seasons, forgoing basketball after the 1947-48 season and football after the 1948 season. He continued to coach baseball, his first love, for almost another 20 years.
Yarnall continued as an economics professor at Lowell Textile until 1960, when he became the athletic director at the school, which had been renamed in 1953 to be Lowell Technological Institute.
In 1966, after 39 years and nearly 200 wins as baseball coach, Yarnall retired.
Yarnall served as athletic director at Lowell Tech until his retirement from the institution in 1973.
Yarnall is a member of the Athletic Hall of Fame at both the University of Massachusetts Lowell and his alma mater, the University of Vermont. He was inducted into the Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame in 1960.
