Phillylacrosse.com, Posted 6/14/21 – Staff Report
Dan Dolphin, who guided Allentown Central Catholic to the PIAA Class AA state championship with Saturday’s 14-5 win over Mars, announced his retirement from teaching and coaching Sunday morning on a Lehigh Valley radio show.
Dolphin, 68, whose Vikings completed a 23-1 season, coached ACC for 14 years and had a record of 201-73. He made it public on Lehigh Valley Fox Sports radio.
Dolphin was the Morning Call’s Coach of the Year in 2011 and 2017. He led ACC to the state quarterfinals in two other seasons, 2017 and 2018.
He has been a Health and Physical Education teacher at Allentown Central Catholic.
Dolphin’s Vikings won five District 11 titles – in 2011 and 2012, then in 2017 and 2018 as well as this year. This ACC squad also won the East Penn Conference title and was the first squad – boys’ or girls’ – to reach the PIAA title game.
Dolphin’s spring sport was actually baseball and he played at West Virginia University. He got into coaching lacrosse in his 30s because his son played. He took the head coaching job at Allentown Central Catholic when it was a club sport and has been the only head coach in 13 seasons of varsity play.
“I was all set to retire from teaching and coaching last year, then the pandemic hit,” Dolphin said. ” In 2020, we knew we had a good team that could make a run at the state championship. I decided to stay one more year, as we were going to graduate only six players from that 2020 team, and we thought the 2021 team would be even better.
“I have decided it is time to turn the program over to someone else. The program is on good footing and there is a good nucleus of players returning.”
