Ed Dawson

Ed Dawson died on 23 October 2026. During Cornell's Week 9 game at Rochester High School in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, he suffered a medical emergency on the sideline. Medics responded and he was taken to a local hospital, where he later died. The game was halted. A dispatcher with the Beaver County Emergency Center told the West Hills Gazette that he had suffered a cardiac arrest; the Cornell School District did not disclose the nature of the emergency.

Superintendent Aaron Thomas announced the death in a statement, saying: "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." The district made support available to students and staff. Rochester Area School District superintendent Joseph Guarino sent condolences to the Cornell community and the Dawson family, and Fort Cherry High School's football team said he had exemplified every quality needed in a high school head coach. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Ed Dawson grew up in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, a town with a celebrated high school football tradition. He played for Aliquippa High School and was a member of the team that won the PIAA state championship in 1991, graduating the following year, in 1992.

He went on to Allegheny College, but was injured in his sophomore year, which ended his playing career. Rather than leave the sport, he came home and began working with the Aliquippa youth football program. "That's what you do, you give back to the community and I wanted to stay with football in some way," he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2011.

After his start in youth football, Dawson worked as an assistant coach at Seneca Valley and Avonworth high schools before joining the staff at Cornell High School in Coraopolis. After two years as an assistant he was promoted to head coach in August 2011, succeeding Dan Knause. "I know the players and that's one of the reasons I applied for the job," he said at the time. "I wanted to keep continuity in the program." That first season ended with a WPIAL playoff loss to Clairton.

In early 2012 Cornell, a small Class 1A school, dropped varsity football because of dwindling numbers. From 2012 to 2015 its students played in a co-op with Quaker Valley, where Dawson was hired as an assistant coach, while he continued to follow Cornell's middle school and youth players in the hope of reviving the team.

Cornell restarted football in 2016 with Dawson as head coach, built around a group of ten freshmen. The Raiders lost their first 17 games after the revival, but in 2019 they went 9-2, won a share of the Big Seven Conference title and reached the WPIAL semifinals, the best season in the school's history. The Beaver County Times named Dawson its Football Coach of the Year. In 2021 Cornell went 7-2 in the regular season, won its first outright Big Seven Conference title since 1983 and entered the WPIAL Class 1A playoffs as the No. 2 seed.

Dawson was in his 12th season as Cornell's head coach in 2026, leading a young roster that he described before the season as probably the most exciting team he had seen collectively. Alongside coaching he worked in the high school's discipline office and served as assistant dean of students.

Dawson had family ties to Cornell football. His older son, E.J. Dawson, was a starting running back for the Raiders, and in 2021 said that several family members had played for Cornell before him. Other details of his family life have not been widely published.

Dawson is remembered above all for keeping Cornell football alive. He stayed connected to the school's young players through the years when it had no team, then rebuilt the program from a long losing streak into a conference champion and WPIAL semifinalist. Tributes from his own district and from rival schools spoke of a coach who spent years preparing young men for life as well as for football.