The Easthampton football community lost one of its pillars when Easthampton High School coach Matt Bean passed away Thursday.
The 62-year-old Southampton resident started Easthampton Youth Football in 1999 and took over the high school team in 2015 when Joe Kocot, who established the program in 1998 and won two Super Bowl titles, resigned.
“Through his many years of dedication to Easthampton Youth and High School Football, Coach Bean’s generosity and guidance has had a positive impact on a countless number of players, friends and family members in our community. Coach Bean will be missed immensely,” Easthampton Friends of Football wrote on Facebook.
Kocot recommended Bean for the job to then-Easthampton athletic director Patti Dougherty after getting to know him coaching Bean’s son Jared.
“It’s a tragic loss for his family, for the community, for the high school — both Hampshire and Easthampton,” said Rick Rogalski, who coached with Bean at Easthampton and against him at Northampton. “He gave a lot and didn’t ask for anything.”
Easthampton went 38-37 during Bean’s eight-year tenure. The Eagles reached the Western Massachusetts semifinals in 2016 and 2019 and qualified for the state tournament in 2021.
“The best thing is he was Matt Bean. He wasn’t trying to be Joe Kocot,” Rogalski said. “He came in with a new system and we implemented it and we had some success. He stayed true to himself. I had a lot of respect for him.”
Bean allowed his assistants freedom within the team’s systems to add and subtract, leaving their own fingerprints on it.
“The biggest takeaway for me when I coached with Coach Bean was the freedom he gave me to grow as a coach and a coordinator,” Rogalski said. “He’s been coaching football for a long time. He was great with the kids. You could tell he genuinely cared about them. Even before I knew him as a coach, I knew he cared about the kids.”
Bean and his wife Deborah – who he is survived by along with his children Kyle, Jared and Jessica, and granddaughters Adelaide, Elliana, and Vera – took in Springfield native Joe Grimes during his high school years, and he eventually became Easthampton’s all-time leading rusher with more than 5,000 yards.
“He did it, you’d think it was effortless. But it wasn’t. He was great with the kids,” said Easthampton assistant Kyle Dragon, who coached with Bean for 16 years, the last six at the high school. “As a coach you have to have compassion for the kids. He got to know them as more than just athletes.”
Bean always addressed his teams like men rather than boys. They echoed that respect.
“He knew that his job was more than football,” said former Easthampton lineman Tallon Garelli, who played at Williams College. “He knew that being a coach meant that he was a role model for all of us and took that just as seriously as the Xs and Os.”
Easthampton played without a home field for the past two years while a new school was built on their practice and game fields at White Brook Middle School. Even as the Eagles scrambled to find places to practice, Bean remained calm.
“Whenever I would approach Matt with more bad news about our situation he would always say, ‘we’ll make it work, we always do,’” Easthampton athletic director Brian Miller said. “Matt did always make it work and he did it with a smile on his face.”
Bean was born in Springfield but grew up and played football in East Longmeadow. He was part of a more than 20-game winning streak in high school.
His love for music was surpassed only by his love for his family. He inspired his longtime colleague turned friend Dragon to learn to play guitar at age 50. Bean’s favorite band was Aerosmith, and the team always ensured there was at least one of the band’s songs on its warm-up playlist.
“When we talked and it wasn’t football, any time we talked his first priority was his family, always talking about his wife and his kids and his grandchildren,” Dragon said. “He had such a great sense of humor. He was always joking and keeping everybody laughing.”
Easthampton began a Thanksgiving football rivalry with Northampton in 2015. After Kocot returned to coach Northampton in 2018, the teams met in Easthampton. Bean and Rogalski sent their offense out in Kocot’s famous split back powe r formation to “get a rise” out of Kocot, he said at the time.
“They got me on that one,” Kocot said. “We joked about it but at the end of the game I said ‘why’d you go away from it?’ We couldn’t stop it.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.