1947 national championship recalled

April 17, 2017

The Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun started a year-long feature, Home Town Teams: Stories from the Sun archives, with what it called “one of the most famous – Cornell College’s 1947 wrestling team.”

Cornell President Russell D. Cole, wrestler Dale "Whitey" Thomas and Coach Paul Scott with the 1947 NCAA championship trophy.
Cornell President Russell D. Cole, wrestler Dale “Whitey” Thomas, and Coach Paul Scott ’29 with the 1947 NCAA championship trophy.

The team won the NCAA and AAU national championships 70 years ago this month, in an era when small colleges like Cornell competed athletically with large state universities.

The series is in anticipation of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group and Main Street Iowa bringing the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street exhibit, “Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America,” to Mount Vernon in the spring of 2018.

The paper published the text as it appeared on the front page of the Mount Vernon Hawkeye-Record and The Lisbon Herald, April 3, 1947, with the headline “Cornell Wins Gold Trophy At National Meet, Take First In N.C.A.A. Tourney.”