Cornell High School football coach Ed Dawson collapsed during a Friday night game in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, and was later pronounced dead at a local hospital as the community reeled.
Dawson told an assistant coach he was not feeling well in the second quarter against Rochester, sat down on the bench, then lay on the turf as his condition worsened. Soon he was not moving.
An EMT rushed in and tried CPR. Dawson was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead. Officials called the game with Cornell leading 16-6.
Breitbart News reported the sudden loss that stunned the small western Pennsylvania program and rival coaches across the area.
Cornell athletic director Bill Sacco described how fast it happened. One moment Dawson was on the sideline. The next, he was down.
Sacco told TribLive what he saw.
"Next thing you know, he wasn’t moving,"
Sacco said the school will feel the loss for a long time.
"We lost a great guy. I am not sure how we will get back to where we need to be. I guess we’ll see what happens."
He added a blunt forecast for the weeks ahead: "Cornell will grieve for a long time."
Cornell High School Superintendent Dr. Aaron Thomas released a statement that left little room for doubt about Dawson’s place in the district.
"This is an extremely difficult situation. To say Coach Dawson was an integral part of Cornell School District would be an understatement. It is hard to put into words what Coach Dawson means to Cornell, and we are all heartbroken, crushed, and in shock."
Thomas said thoughts and prayers were with Dawson’s family and warned of hard days ahead. He closed with a direct line to the coach: "We love you, Coach Dawson."
Dawson took over as Cornell’s head coach in 2011 after earlier stints as an assistant at Cornell and Quaker Valley. He built a reputation that reached beyond his own sideline.
Donnie Militzer, coach at Our Lady of Sacred Heart, called him a welcoming guy with a big personality and said the news "just crushed me."
Fort Cherry coach Tanner Garry put it in plain terms.
"He was a mentor, a leader, and exemplified what a coach should be, on and off the field. He was a great friend and a great leader."
Cornell entered the Friday game at 3-5 overall and 1-4 in the Big 7 Conference, still chasing a playoff berth. The scoreboard never mattered again after Dawson went down.
No medical cause of death was released in the initial reports. The assistant coach Dawson spoke to was not named. The hospital was not identified.
High school football still runs on men who show up every week for other people’s kids. When one of them falls on the turf and does not get up, a town finds out fast what he was really worth.
