Frank Donald "Dyke" Smith (March 17, 1912 – April 16, 1986) was an
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...
Delaware State University
Delaware State University (DSU or Del State) is a public historically black land-grant research university in Dover, Delaware. DSU also has two satellite campuses: one in Wilmington and one in Georgetown. The university encompasses four col ...
(then Delaware State College) in 1942.
Early life and education
Smith was born on March 17, 1912, in
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...
Morris Brown College
Morris Brown College (MBC) is a private Methodist historically black liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded January 5, 1881, Morris Brown is the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated entirely by African Ame ...
from 1932 to 1936, playing
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
and
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
. In football, he was the school's starting
quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...
, and was named an
All-America
The All-America designation is an annual honor bestowed upon an amateur sports person from the United States who is considered to be one of the best amateurs in their sport. Individuals receiving this distinction are typically added to an All-Am ...
selection by most black newspapers. In basketball, he played
forward
Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward.
Forward may also refer to:
People
* Forward (surname)
Sports
* Forward (association football)
* Forward (basketball), including:
** Point forward
** Power forward (basketball)
** Sm ...
, winning All-Southern Conference as Morris Brown won 48 straight games from 1932 to 1933. He was an inaugural inductee to the school's hall of fame.
Coaching career
After graduating in 1937, Smith started a coaching career with a football team in Georgia. In 1939, he moved to
Anniston, Alabama
Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acco ...
, to become the first head coach at Cobb High School, coaching "anything that anybody wanted to play." He accepted a position at Edward Waters University in 1940, spending one season there, before moving to Alabama A&M University in 1941. He compiled a 6–4 record that year with Alabama A&M. Smith was hired by
Delaware State College
Delaware State University (DSU or Del State) is a public historically black land-grant research university in Dover, Delaware. DSU also has two satellite campuses: one in Wilmington and one in Georgetown. The university encompasses four col ...
(now Delaware State University) in 1942, compiling a 3–1–1 record in one season before being drafted to serve in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Multiple of the athletes he coached followed him from school to school, including Felmon Motley, who attended Cobb, Alabama A&M, and Delaware State. When he joined Delaware State, 33 members of the 1941 Alabama A&M team followed him there.
Later life and death
After returning from World War II, he taught social studies and math at several schools in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, and
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.
In 1985, Smith was inducted into the Delaware State College Athletic Hall of Fame. Felmon Motley and several other 1942 Delaware State players put their money together to fly Smith to Delaware for a team reunion. "He really had a nice time seeing all the boys," Motley said. "When I got him back to the airport, he said he was ready to go back and die because he had seen everyone again. He had wondered what had happened to everyone. He had a nice time seeing his friends and the fellows he coached." Smith died on April 16, 1986, in Anniston at the age of 74.