University of Minnesota Athletics
Ken Yackel
Football, 1952-56
Men’s Hockey, 1952-56
Baseball, 1952-1956
HOF Class of 1993
St. Paul native Ken Yackel, a three-sport star at Humboldt High School, did the same thing at the University of Minnesota.
Yackel earned All-America honors as captain of the Gopher hockey team in his 1956 senior year, when he also lettered in football and baseball.
He was named to the All-Tournament Team in 1954, the second year in which he and the hockey Gophers played to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament. He also played on the silver-medal-winning U.S. team at the 1952 Winter Olympic Games in Oslo, Norway.
As a hockey pro, Yackel played with Cleveland and Providence in the American League, with Saskatoon and St. Paul in the Western League and, in 1959, with the Boston Bruins -- one of two American-developed players in the NHL in that decade. In the early 1960s, Yackel played for and coached the International League’s Minneapolis Millers.
Yackel was head coach of the 1965 U.S. National Team in the world tournament in Finland, and in 1971 served as interim coach at the U of M.
He later worked in the Mariucci Inner City Hockey Starter Association, encouraging hockey among Twin Cities urban children. He was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, and St. Paul’s Ken Yackel Ice Arena is named for him.