Donald R. Yetman – Athlete/Builder

Inducted March 28, 2009

Donald Yetman provided the province with many great years of exciting baseball, hockey, and soccer both as an athlete and a coach. He played with three provincial senior championship baseball teams in 1960, 1963, and 1964. From 1957-1963, Yetman was a member of the Feildians who captured two St. John’s Junior League Baseball Championships and three St. John’s Senior League Baseball Championships. In 1962, he was named the St. John’s League Most Improved Player. The Feildian Athletic Association named Yetman the Most Valuable Player in Senior Baseball in 1965. While playing with the St. John’s Townies baseball team, they captured four consecutive master league All Newfoundland Baseball Championships. As a hockey player, Yetman was a member of the 1958 and 1959 All Newfoundland Junior Championship teams. In 1969, he joined the Feildians senior hockey team for the Newfoundland Intermediate hockey championship. The Feildians went on to win that series and gained the right to represent Newfoundland in the Atlantic Hardy Cup playoffs in New Brunswick. Yetman was awarded the Most Valuable Player for Junior Football by the Feildian Athletic Association in 1958 but his soccer career was cut short due to injury and conflict with playing baseball during the summer. Though Yetman’s accomplishments were great as a player, he also gave unselfishly back to the community as a coach, spending more than 20 years coaching minor hockey and minor baseball. In 1979, he was coach of the Feildians when they won the Pony League Championships. He went on to coach the Feildians to three St. John’s League Junior Baseball Championships in 1980, 1982, and 1983. In recognition of Yetman’s work involving coaching minor hockey, he received the Newfoundland Amateur Hockey Association Award for Outstanding Service to Minor Hockey in 1975. Yetman produced two Pee Wee “A” All Newfoundland Champions (1973, 1975) and three Bantam “A” All Newfoundland Champions (1976, 1982, 1985). His 1985 Bantam “A” All Newfoundland Championship Team went on to win a silver medal in the Atlantic Bantam “A”. At the 1979 Canada Winter Games in Brandon, Manitoba, Yetman was coach for the Newfoundland entry. Yetman’s most important contribution to minor sports was not measured in wins and losses but rather by the great influence he had in shaping the lives of the young athletes he coached. In 1986, Donald Yetman was inducted into the St. John’s Baseball Hall of Fame.