Yearbook: Lebanon Valley College

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Here's the yearbook of a college from near my old stomping grounds: PA's I-81 corridor. I never visited the school, but Lebanon Valley is a frequent mention on the news regarding school closings and small college athletics.

Their yearbooks: the Quitapahilla and the Bizarre are nicely done and include every available yearbook from 1889-2010 (there was no yearbook printed for 1903). Taking a look at the quality of the scans, it should surprise no one that the Internet Archive is behind this one.

LVC wisely left the heavy lifting of digitizing the texts to the Internet Archive, but did go to the trouble of linking each year's volume on one page.

Former Dutchman Lou Sorrentino graduated in '53 and went on to play for the Philadelphia Eagles. 

Lebanon valley College has been playing football since the 1897 season, but they have never really hit their stride. The 2009 season brought them 9 wins - which is an all-time high water mark for wins for the Flying Dutchmen.




It's a nice look at a small school whose football might never make it to the national stage - but don't say that to their fans. Lebanon Valley clearly has a passionate student fan base.


Such recent examples from past games that caused the review which prompted the neutral site implementation were foul signs from both sides, curses words and explicit chants, shoving matches between rival students, and a beer bottle being broken over a spectators head at last year’s game. Officials feared that the current trend would continue until someone required serious medical attention after a brawl and the schools would have to stop the annual game.  Also, the fear was that since players many times feed off of the fan atmosphere, the unsportsmanlike qualities in the stands would creep onto the football field.


It's another great yearbook from an unexpected small-college source - there is simply no excuse for larger colleges to put off digitizing their yearbooks. Take Lebanon Valley College as an example - your school's history can live on forever just like the Dutchmen!





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It is the mission of The Unbalanced Line Online Library to present important and interesting historical texts to college football fans. Items will be added regularly as blog postings and can be easily indexed in the Yearbooks button on the site bar.

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