Since 2013, the Naperville Central Athletic Hall of Fame has sought annually to recognize those coaches, athletes, and Friends of Athletics who have had a profound impact on shaping the history of Naperville Community and Naperville Central High School athletic tradition. While the early days of competition saw some exceptional individual athletes, including Jack Haman (class of 1936), the first Naperville resident selected in the NFL draft, and Woody Gerber (1938) who would go on to play for the Philadelphia Eagles, it’s been well documented that Hall of Fame coach Joker Harshbarger’s football and track squads of the 1940’s would be the first to set a standard of dominance for a small farming community named Naperville. One by one, all members of the “dream backfield” of 1948 & 1949 have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and each time any was asked “Who should be next?” their answer was the same: Dan Dobrowski.Roger Dornburg (1950), a member of the inaugural Hall of Fame class in 2013, describes Dobrowski as “a bruising end.” He remembers, “He’d hit you, and you’d feel it.” The legend of how hard Dan Dobrowski played and punished opponents remains clear in the memory of those who played against him and are still with us. By chance, one member of the Naperville Central Hall of Fame committee connected with a Downers Grove graduate from the same era at a local golf course not too long ago, and when she asked the gentleman - who was well into his 90’s - if he remembered the name “Dobrowski,” there was an immediate change in his body language; he stopped and shared, “We hated playing the Naperville kids. We knew that playing Naperville meant we’d spend all afternoon getting knocked to the ground by their end, Dobrowski.”Dan Dobrowski was a dominant force for Harshbarger’s teams, though the Dobrowskis didn’t have the opportunity to play organized sports until high school. Dan’s mother was a native of St. Could, Minnesota, and his father was from Milwaukee. Together, they settled in Lisle where Dan’s father would find work as a tool and die maker for International Harvester. The Dobrowskis raised four children, three of whom graduated from Naperville Community High School. When it came to sports, Dan’s younger brother Dave shared that all they had was the neighborhood kids to put together baseball and football games in the yard, but it turned out that neighborhood pick-up games would be all Dan needed to grow into a stand-out performer in an era of tremendous athletes.Dan Dobrowksi was a 3x All-Conference running back in the Little Seven Conference. The 1945 squad, led by Dobrowski, would finish the season with a 6-1-2 record, with Dobrowski’s defense holding opponents scoreless in eight consecutive games to start the season. Following the 1945 campaign, Dobrowski was named All-State as a defensive end before turning his attention to track and field in the spring, where in 1946 he would set a school record for the shotput with a throw of 48’ 4”, under the tutelage of Harshbager, who was also the school’s track coach at the time.Following high school, Dan Dobrowski enlisted in the United State Army, rising to the rank of Sergeant and deploying during the Korean War as a part of the 187th Airborne Infantry in 1950. After injuring his back during a jump, Dobrowski returned home to Naperville and enrolled at North Central College. Unable to ignore the call of competition, Dobrowski played football for the Cardinals and coach E.W. Olson, earning All-Conference honors in 1951. While studying and competing just up the road from his alma mater, Dobrowski also met his future wife, Kay Corkery, whom he would marry just a short time after graduating.Dan and Kay would remain in Naperville, starting a family while Dan began work as a football coach and school teacher. After a few years, Dobrowski left education and went to work for his father-in-law, buying and selling cattle in the stockyards on the south side of Chicago before going into real estate. For all the attention that the Harshbarger teams of 1947-1949 receive, it was Dan Dobrowski and his teammates that turned the expectations for Naperville Community High School athletics just a few years earlier, a valuable reminder for today’s athlete that not only are they competing for themselves, but it’s also their responsibility to pave the way and raise the bar for those who will come after them.