Bill Yoast
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
coach best known for being featured in the 2000 film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans
Remember the Titans is a 2000 American sports film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Boaz Yakin. Inspired by real events, the plot was conceived from a screenplay written by Gregory Allen Howard. The film starts as a new coach of the Titans, a football team previously coached by the...
. He was portrayed by veteran actor Will Patton
Will Patton
William Rankin "Will" Patton is an American actor.-Life and career:Patton was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest of three children. His father is Bill Patton, a playwright and acting/directing instructor who was a Lutheran minister and served as a chaplain at Duke University...
.
Yoast grew up in Florence, Alabama
Florence, Alabama
Florence is the county seat of Lauderdale County, Alabama, United States, in the northwestern corner of the state.According to the 2005 Census Bureau estimates, the city's population was 36,721....
. After a three-year tour in the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, he attended Georgia Military College
Georgia Military College
Georgia Military College is a United States Military Junior College, high school, and middle school in Milledgeville, Georgia. GMC is one of five military junior colleges that participates in the Army's Early Commissioning Program. Cadets who graduate from GMC's two-year, military science-oriented...
and later Mercer University
Mercer University
Mercer University is an independent, private, coeducational university with a Baptist heritage located in the U.S. state of Georgia. Mercer is the only university of its size in the United States that offers programs in eleven diversified fields of study: liberal arts, business, education, music,...
, where he joined Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu is an undergraduate, college fraternity with chapters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Sigma Nu was founded in 1869 by three cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia...
fraternity
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
and earned a Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in Physical Education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
. He later earned a Masters degree from Peabody College
Peabody College
Peabody College of Education and Human Development was founded in 1875 when the University of Nashville, located in Nashville, Tennessee, split into two separate educational institutions...
.
A high school and college athlete, Yoast turned to coaching as a career. He worked in Sparta, Georgia
Sparta, Georgia
Sparta is a country town in Hancock County, Georgia, United States. The population was 1,265 at the 2000 census. The city is the county seat of Hancock County...
and Roswell, Georgia
Roswell, Georgia
Roswell is a city located in northern Fulton County; it is a suburb of northern Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The 2010 Census population was 88,346. It is the eighth largest city in Georgia...
before moving to Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2009, the city had a total population of 139,966. Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles south of downtown Washington, D.C.Like the rest of northern Virginia, as well as...
, where he spent several decades and earned his greatest fame.
Yoast's 1971 season at T. C. Williams High School
T. C. Williams High School
T. C. Williams High School is a public high school in Alexandria, Virginia, named after former superintendent Thomas Chambliss Williams of Alexandria City Public Schools who served from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s...
served as the inspiration for Remember the Titans. Yoast, who is white
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
, worked as an assistant to head coach Herman Boone
Herman Boone
Herman Boone is a former American high school football coach, most famous for coaching at T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. Boone was portrayed by Denzel Washington in the 2000 film Remember the Titans....
, who is black, at the newly integrated school. The team enjoyed a dominant season, winning the state title and taking a second-place national ranking.
Having retired in 1990, Yoast has published a book discussing his experiences in coaching, Remember This Titan.
Yoast had four daughters and seven grandchildren. His daughter Sheryl - a football fanatic who assisted her father during his coaching career - died suddenly in 1996, at age 34, from a heart malfunction. In Remember the Titans, released four years later, Sheryl is played by Hayden Panettiere
Hayden Panettiere
Hayden Leslie Panettiere is an American actress and singer, best known as cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC television series Heroes. She began her acting career by playing Sarah Roberts on One Life to Live , and Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light , before starring at age 10 as Sheryl Yoast in...
, and is portrayed as Bill Yoast's only child.