Road trips and red Twizzlers will always remind Bates College alumni David Pless, Rich McNeil and Chris Murtagh of longtime Bobcats track and field coach Al Fereshetian.

Fereshetian, who died June 22 at the age of 66, had a devotion to his student-athletes that did not end once he left the track.

Al Fereshetian, also known as Coach Fresh, coached 48 athletes who earned All-America honors and nine who won national championship during his 26 years leading the Bates College track and field and cross country teams. Fereshetian died at 66 in Turner last month. Phyllis Graber Jensen

“He drove me through the night to get me to graduation,” Murtagh, a member of Bates’ Class off 2011, said. “David Pless was a sophomore at the time, he was sleeping in the backseat. Coach and I drove through the night together and just talked about all things in life. He was eating Twizzlers to stay awake.”

Fereshetian, also known as Coach Fresh, did the same for McNeil in 2010, driving him from a meet at Baldwin Wallace College in Cleveland, Ohio, back to the Lewiston campus in time for McNeil’s 4 p.m. graduation ceremony the following day.

Another time, Fereshetian drove Pless, a 2013 Bates graduate, five hours through Wisconsin in the middle of the night so that he could make his flight out of Chicago after a meet, which he did with 30 minutes to spare.

“He loved good road trip,” McNeil said. “He sometimes could be a little bit of a speed demon, so, you know, had to remind him we’re not at NASCAR.”

DEVELOPING EXCELLENCE

Fereshetian was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, and lived in Turner at the time of his death. He began coaching the Bates track and field and cross country teams in 1995 and continued to do so for 26 years before retiring in 2021. At Bates, he coached more than 500 athletes — 48 earned All-America honors and nine won NCAA Division-III national titles.

“(Fereshetian) had a gift at developing athletes and helping people not only grasp the events, but excel at them,” Murtagh said. “I think the record speaks for itself in terms of what he did.”

During their careers at Bates, Murtagh was a two-time All-American and McNeil a three-time All-American, while Pless earned 10 All-America honors and won three NCAA Division III national championships.

All three were throwers who also played football for the Bobcats. They credit Fereshetian for their success in the throwing events and say he was the reason they chose to attend Bates College in the first place.

Pless went on to compete professionally, with encouragement by Fereshetian, who helped him find a facility in San Diego to continue his training.

“He told me, ‘David, I have gotten to the end of what I can teach you, but I think that you need to continue throwing, and I think that you could continue with the shot put or with the hammer,’” Pless said.  “There was this acknowledgement of, he had poured everything into me, and he also realized I needed a fresh perspective.”

Murtagh said Fereshetian worked the throwers the same as the distance runners and sprinters — with agility work, yoga classes, full workouts, detailed warmups, stretching and technique drills and weightlifting.

“It was voluntary, but he made you want to come back to the gym and do more,” Murtagh said.

Pless said Fereshetian was “supportive and yet direct.”

“If you screwed up, he wasn’t going to let you just brush it off and say, ‘This is OK,’” Pless said. “It’s not that it wasn’t OK, it was just either a learning experience or it was a triumph.”

Fereshetian’s office window overlooked the track, and beneath that window were plaques of each Bates track and field All-American. Pless, McNeil and Murtagh said this tangible honor motivated athletes to reach their full potential.

Accolades, though, aren’t what stand out the most years later; what does is the bond and family atmosphere that Fereshetian fostered within the team.

“Unfortunately, I married a girl from Bowdoin,” McNeil said with a laugh. “But almost half of my wedding party was former teammates. I think we’re all still pretty close. It speaks volumes that we’re all at each other’s weddings.”

McNeil’s experience with Fereshetian extended beyond his four years as a student-athlete, and into the coaching realm.

After graduating from Bates College in 2010, McNeil was an assistant track and field coach at MIT for two years, a graduate assistant at Springfield College for two years, and then spent a year as an assistant at Tufts University. After those five years, he returned to Bates help Fereshetian coach.

“We got to go play racquetball at lunch when we were coworkers,” McNeil said. “He was talking about playing racquetball and how he knew he would teach that in PE class, so it was fun for us to be able to do that together as colleagues later on in life.”

‘IMPACTED SO MANY LIVES’

A celebration of life for Fereshetian was held on June 29. Pless was one of several hundred attendees.

“He had actually put together all of the components of the service itself,” Pless said. “By the Old Testament, he was very precise and how he liked to do things, very attention-to-detail oriented. It was a celebration of life — truly. They had music, playing, we sang multiple songs throughout, and there were recollections from all the members of his family.”

Pless also said Fereshetian wrote a letter to his family 14 years ago, in which he proclaimed his love for them, that he wanted read aloud at his celebration of life service.

“The message that I’m left with about his life is he was deeply religious, and that formed a big piece of his character,” Pless said. “Here on Earth, he impacted so many lives in a positive way, that he had a network effect of other people that he touched. I’ve never seen so many people at a funeral before, and that was indicative of the kind of impact that he had.”

Murtagh said he still feels bad about how often track meets took the coach away from family for entire weekends, because he knew how important family time was to Fereshetian.

“Thank you to his family for sharing him with us for so many of those Saturdays for so many of those years,” Murtagh said. “I always felt like he was a father figure to me and my teammates, but I know he had his own kids, too … big thank you to them for sharing him with us for so many years.”

Bates College is currently conducting a fundraising project to purchase a new scoreboard, which will be named in honor of Fereshetian, at the Russell Street Field Complex.