By MATT VAUTOUR
AMHERST — Standing on the deck, it’s hard to tell what Russ Yarworth’s darting eyes are searching for as he looks from lane to lane at the swimmers in front of him.
An opportunity to coach or an opportunity for a wisecrack?
In almost 40 years leading the UMass men’s aquatics program, Yarworth has been a regular provider of both.
The swimmers in the pool at Boyden Gymnasium on this Wednesday evening in July are Yarworth’s masters swimmers, adults ranging in age from 20-70.
Yarworth calls the group, which he and women’s coach Bob Newcomb work with, University of Massachusetts Aquatics Masters Association, a name he’s arranged specifically so the acronym would spell UMAMA. Why? Because it’s funny and Yarworth likes being funny.
“Humor drives the engine,” he said.
Yarworth’s humor mostly ranges from good-natured chop busting to silly groaners.
UMass men’s soccer coach Fran O’Leary is a willing and convenient foil. Their offices share a wall and when their doors are open they’ll sometimes snipe playfully at each other at high volume, in Yarworth’s booming baritone and O’Leary’s Irish brogue, without getting up from their desks.
Everyone is a target for a wise crack or at least his audience.
Well, almost everyone.
“I’m not there yet with Ryan,” Yarworth said about new athletic director Ryan Bamford, his boss. “But I’m warming up.”
The humor and ever-present good mood hides the intensity and competitive spirit that made Yarworth a good swimmer and water polo player as a UMass student and an extremely successful coach ever since.
In his 36 seasons coaching, UMass has won either the New England or Atlantic 10 championship 24 times. He’s won the A-10 Coach of the Year trophy so many times (14) it could be named after him.
He was almost Dr. Yarworth. Armed with a biochemistry degree, Yarworth was planning on attending medical school. But a short stint doing research at Mass General convinced him that he wasn’t destined to spend his career wearing a lab coat. He went back to UMass to get his masters degree and was leaning toward teaching.
But when Bey Melamed, who coached Yarworth, completed his doctorate in computer science, athletic director Frank McInerny and then women’s coach John Nunnelly convinced the then 22-year-old Yarworth to be the interim men’s coach for the 1979-80 season.
Back then, coaching the men’s swim team was a job while he was in school not his career.
“It was a different landscape back then,” Yarworth said. “In 1979, athletics at UMass was not Division I as far as how we look at it now. It was regional. I was barely making any money. I was coaching UMass and the Amherst Titans age-group team and a little masters club there. I was going to grad school too.”
He never planned to stay, but every time he thought about leaving something got a little better. He went from part time to full time. His funding improved.
When the athletic department began booming in the mid-1990s, fueled by the John Calipari led men’s basketball success, Yarworth was entrenched.
He was not only coaching swimming, but thriving with a mostly under-funded men’s water polo team.
The Minutemen made seven NCAA water polo tournaments during his tenure and finished third in the nation in 1999 and fourth on four other occasions. He was inducted into the College Water Polo Association Hall of Fame in 2007.
But UMass dropped water polo after the 2001 season as department cutbacks led to seven sports being eliminated.
“Water polo seems like a different part of my life now, but it was a fun ride. I was totally immersed. It was rewarding and exhausting,” Yarworth said. “It’s been a long time. At first it was really hard. I missed that experience, because coaching swimming and coaching water polo are very different.”
They might be different, but Yarworth has been successful coaching both of them.
His men’s swimming teams seem to always get better as the year goes on, peaking at the end of the season. He didn’t win a championship in his first six years as a coach, but over the next 30 years, they’ve only failed to win a title six times.
He’ll head into his 37th season as the A-10’s two-time defending champ.
“I think the kids in the program have made me a success,” he said. “They do all the work, I just ride their coattails.”
But he defines success by more than the trophies in his second-floor Boyden office or the Atlantic 10 championship wristwatches in his Belchertown home.
Yarworth and his wife Sue often have a steady diet of weddings on their summer calendar because he’s invested in more than his swimmers’ times in the pool.
“One of my captains is on an eight-week internship in Australia,” Yarworth said. “Will he be able to train? Will he be able to come back and reach the next level? I don’t know. But he’s doing what’s important. We have a high percentage of engineers on the team. Knowing how difficult that is time wise, knowing they can swim at this level and still maintain good grades is tremendous.”
The mutual fondness carries over to his UMAMA swimmers. While many in the group are training for their own events, ranging from masters meets to triathlons, their success or lack of it won’t add to his trophy collection. When he and Newcomb first started the group early in his career, it was a way to make some extra money. But now he enjoys their enthusiasm for swimming.
“They come in, they want to be there. They always say thank you after the workout even after I yell at them and make them swim fast,” Yarworth said. “It is enjoyable.”
Denise Spence, an Amherst physician who uses the class to train for masters meets, said the swimmers cherish the program.
“You have a lot of adults going to work and at the end of the day we’re tired, but he makes it totally worth it,” Spence said. “He makes it lively. He’s feisty. He likes to tease us. But at the same time he doesn’t let us slack off. He treats us like athletes. He makes it a lot of fun.”
Yarworth makes most things fun. He turns 60 in April and jokes that his only limb that doesn’t ache is his left arm. But he’s not slowing down.
“People ask me when I’m going to retire. When I walk on the deck and I don’t want to be there,” he said. “I’m very lucky to have all these years of being involved with different phases of aquatics with different groups and different generations and still get that positive feeling when I walk out of there.
“I’m pretty lucky. I have a beautiful wife. I have a nice home,” he continued. “I have a career that I love. I’m surrounded by generally pretty positive young people.”
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage