By Dan Weber
NKyTribune sports reporter
As one of just three football coaches in 50 years at Beechwood High School, Mike Yeagle, who died this week at the age of 63, was a man who made it happen at levels unseen in Kentucky high school football.
“Bernie (Barre) took it to a championship level and Mike kept it there,” said the man who succeeded him, Noel Rash. “And that’s the hardest thing you can do, to keep it there,” said Rash, quoting the head coach he called “Michael.”

“He had a lot to do with the culture of greatness that is Beechwood,” Rash said, referencing the school’s two Class A state track championships Thursday. “Beechwood was a great place for so long but Michael took it to another stratosphere. He really loved Beechwood. Those kids were his kids.”
In his 15 seasons from 1991 through 2005, Yeagle’s teams won eight state championships in 10 championship game appearances, and he was the first Kentucky coach to lead his team to four straight state titles from 1991 through 1994. Yeagle finished his time at Beechwood with a 183-27 record, an 87.1 winning percentage.
No surprise then when WCPO-TV honored the top nine all-time coaching legends of Greater Cincinnati high school football, there with the likes of Moeller’s Gerry Faust, Roger Bacon’s Bron Bacevich and Bob Lewis of Wyoming and Conner, was Mike Yeagle. The other two Northern Kentucky coaches to make that list are Highlands’ Dale Mueller and Newport Central Catholic’s Bob Schneider.
“If you were in Kentucky high school football, Mike made you get better, or you would have a very long night,” said Rash, who served as Yeagle’s defensive coordinator during his later seasons at his alma matter, where Yeagle had been a quarterback under Barre.
Health issues at the age of 41 forced Yeagle to take off the 2002 season. And then when he took the Lloyd head coaching job, caused him to step down early in the 2007 season.
“Looking back, no one could have asked for a better mentor,” former Beechwood assistant Rob Stoll, who went on to become head coach at Cincinnati’s Turpin High School, told the Enquirer. “Mike was so organized, passionate, and – very importantly – knowledgeable about the game, that every day I learned . . . Mike was the best motivator I have ever been around. He understood that players needed direction and at times tough love but he would always be there to pick them up.”
Yeagle, a member of the Beechwood Hall of Fame and the Northern Kentucky Athletic Directors Hall of Fame, was also the first person from Beechwood inducted into Cincinnati’s Buddy LaRosa High School Sports Hall of Fame.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.