Cornell football plays its first game without late head coach Ed Dawson
· Yahoo Sports
BELLEVUE — It has been an emotional week for the Cornell High School football team after losing its head coach, Ed Dawson, who died during the team’s Week 9 game against Rochester.
Just hours before the team suited up and traveled to take on Northgate in Week 10 on Friday, Oct. 30, the Cornell squad attended the services for Dawson.
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While Cornell fell to Northgate 7-0, it was an effort Dawson would be proud of, with the team taking the game down to the wire and having a chance to tie and take the lead with seconds remaining.
“He would have been so proud of this team tonight,” Cornell assistant coach and Dawson’s nephew Ken Rainey said. “We played so well for 48 minutes, with our defense strong throughout and while our offense started out slow, we made our adjustments and had a shot at the end.
"We played hard and that’s all we asked out of these guys tonight.”
For the past week, the entire Western Pennsylvania high school football community has wrapped their arms around the Coraopolis and Cornell communities, with touching tributes sweeping across the WPIAL, with coaching staff wearing blue wristbands and custom t-shirts.
Many teams across the area, including Cornell’s opponent, Northgate, donated its 50/50 drawing to the Dawson family.
With everything that transpired over the past seven days, it wouldn’t be questioned if Cornell would not want to play the game.
But not the Raiders' program.
Despite emotions running high, the team got a consensus, with every player on the roster voting to play their game against Northgate in honor of Dawson.
“The kids wanted to play because that is what coach Ed would have wanted,” Cornell interim head coach Mike Smith said. “We gave it all we had, left it all out on the field and that is all that we could ask for.”
For 48 minutes straight, Cornell fought to the very end, just like Dawson would have wanted his team to do.
Senior wide reciever Jaiden Swann and quarterback Ta'rell Jones got the offense humming with a pair of deep passes down the sidelines early in the first quarter, while Jeremiah Dent reignited the offensive attack late in the third quarter with a plethora of strong runs.
Each time the Cornell team seemed out of the game, it made a stop or a third-down conversion to keep the team in the game until the waning moments.
“This is a resilient group. Even though this group is young, we have a great senior class that has held everyone together through all of this, even in the morning during the service,” Rainey said. “I hope we don’t hang our heads tonight. Ed and I would talk about this team a lot, and tonight, this was the best version of this team.”
Throughout Dawson’s coaching career, one of his favorite moments that he had a chance to do during his 12 years at Cornell was getting a chance to coach his sons, E.J. and Isaiah.
Despite being in college and playing defensive line at Marietta, E.J. was on the sidelines just like his dad was, coaching the Raiders program and continuing his father’s legacy.
“It’s been a long day. We had a very close bond and I would argue that my dad was my best friend,” E.J. Dawson said. “He went out doing exactly what he loved to do and right where he wanted to be, surrounded by family.
"I got to do the same thing today by carrying on his honor.”
Ethan Morrison is the sports reporter for the Beaver County Times. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him at EthanMorrison26 on X.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Cornell football plays its first game without late head coach Ed Dawson