Values: Yeomans At Home In Bellingham -- Shorecrest Coach Moves For Family

Tim Yeomans is moving away from home for a better home life for his family.

Yeomans, head football coach at Shorecrest High School the past three seasons, resigned last week to accept a coaching and teaching position with Bellingham High School.

Yeomans, a 1982 Shorecrest graduate, will be the head wrestling coach and assistant football coach at Bellingham in the Class AA Northwest League. Yeomans, a Mill Creek resident, wanted to buy a home in the Shoreline School District so he and his family could become more involved with the community. They could not find a home to their liking there, so they looked north.

"My wife (Keri) and I had gone to school together in Pullman, and we enjoyed living in smaller towns," Yeomans said. "Shorecrest was really a great opportunity, but with our family values, we wanted to have one parent home with the children all the time, and we didn't think we could make that happen in the Shoreline area. We've been looking for two years for a home in the Shoreline area in a neighborhood we wanted to live in and we could afford, but we couldn't find one."

They plan to buy a home in Whatcom County inside the Bellingham High School boundaries.

"When you say your community is the most important thing but you live outside the community you're coaching and teaching in, you're being somewhat hypocritical," Yeomans said. "Inside, you know you're not walking your talk. Shoreline's a great community, but we felt we were not able to fully partake in it."

Rich Gustafson, athletic director for the Shoreline School District, said he hopes to hire an interim coach by the end of the week. It's probably too close to the start of fall turnout to hire a permanent coach, he said.

"It's tough in any position to lose someone of the quality of a Tim Yeomans," Gustafson said. "He dedicated himself to the kids, and he developed such a strong program at Shorecrest. I've never met anyone so thorough and so organized."

Yeomans replaces Allan Bredy, who coached wrestling in Bellingham for 11 years. Bredy resigned to become athletic director at Spokane's Lewis & Clark High School.

Yeomans will teach European history and world geography at Bellingham. He has a master's degree in European history and German from Washington State University.

The Scots advanced to the playoffs twice under Yeomans (1992 and 1994). Shorecrest was the Western AA Conference champion in 1992. His career record was 21-9.

"I had a wonderful situation at Shorecrest," Yeomans said. "I'm really excited to continue to coach football at Bellingham, but it was hard to give up a program that really had gotten pretty good."

Yeomans said another factor was he wanted his children, Mikaela, 4, and Hayden, 3, to attend schools in the same district he works for. That made giving up his Shorecrest coaching position a bit easier.

"It's really better for my family," he said. "When it gets right down to it, there's really no argument."

Yeomans was Shorecrest freshman football coach in 1991-92. He was head wrestling coach at Pullman High School in 1989-90, and assistant wrestling coach at Inglemoor in 1990-91.

As a senior at Shorecrest, he qualified for the state wrestling tournament at 158 pounds in 1982.

Shorecrest has two other head coaching vacancies, girls basketball and fastpitch softball.