C. Arthur Dahl, Class of ’26 (Posthumous)
The late C. Arthur Dahl, Jr., ’26, formerly of Blairsville, Pa., has been selected as one of the six inductees in Allegheny College’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Dahl, who earned four varsity letters in football at Allegheny, also went on to play football at the U.S. Military academy (West Point) upon his graduation from Allegheny with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1926. In those days, it was not uncommon to play four years at one school and continue on to another school and play the same sport.
Today, however, the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics have specific rules against this. A student has five years from the time he enters a college or university to play four years in a sport.
At West Point, Dahl made the varsity squad his freshman season, replacing “Tiny” Hewitt (a graduate of Pitt) at fullback. He reportedly scored all the points for Army in the Army-Navy game played at Soldiers Field in Chicago, Ill., in front of a sell-out crowd.
Dahl was the leading scorer on the 1922 (73 points), 1923 (69 points) and 1925 (49 points) Allegheny teams. He set the Allegheny career scoring record in football in his senior season with a career total 31 touchdowns, 15 point-after-touchdown kicks, and one field goal for 204 points.
His record stood for 50 years at the school. It was not surpassed until 1976 when Solymosi ’77, a tailback, scored 212 points in his four-year career with the Gators. Dahl currently remains second on this career scoring list.
President of the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity his senior year, Dahl received his master’s degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh in 1932 and became a high school teacher of American history and a football coach at West Newton High, Jeannette High, and Aspinwall High Schools in Pennsylvania. He retired in 1964.
