DWIGHT TODAY | 50TH ANNIVERSARY
basketball diaries Father and Son on the Hardcourt
Trivia question: What do Jeremy Lin of the Brooklyn Nets, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, and Chancellor Stephen Spahn have in common? Answer at the end of this story. Dwight’s long-standing scholar-athlete tradition is also deeply rooted in the Spahn family. Their legacy at the intersection of education and sports dates back to the 1930s, when Dr. M.C. (Moe) Spahn first became a basketball star at City College of New York — in those days, a national powerhouse — and later in the pros in the early, rough and tumble, pre-NBA days. After retiring from the game, Dr. Spahn who had earned his PhD in Education from NYU, became Headmaster of Franklin School in 1950, and remained at the helm for 25 years. At Franklin, which evolved into Anglo-American International School and later joined forces with Dwight, students affectionately called him “Coach,” reflecting his role as mentor on and off the court. Like his father before him, Chancellor Stephen Spahn was an All-American basketball player in college at Dartmouth. While his path did not lead to the pros, it converged with his father’s again in 1967, when he began his own career in education at Dwight. Today, as we mark Chancellor Spahn’s 50th anniversary, we take a look back at the quite notable hardcourt achievements of father and son. DR. M.C. (MOE) SPAHN: GUARD After learning to play primarily in schoolyards and as an All-City player for Bryant High School in Queens, Moe joined the starting lineup at CCNY in 1931. The team won the Eastern championships in ’32 and ’33, with six-footer Moe as captain in ’33. He was named All-American and led CCNY in scoring. His coach was the legendary Nat Holman, an early innovator of the game and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Holman
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considered Moe to be one of his ten greatest players. This is saying something since he coached CCNY for 36 seasons and his 1949-50 squad completed the singular feat of winning the NCAA and the NIT tournaments in the same season. Upon graduating in 1934, Moe joined Holman as Assistant Coach and began his graduate studies. Moe also turned pro that year and played for teams in Newark, NJ, and New Britain, CT, finishing second in scoring in the fledgling American Basketball League (ABL) during his rookie year. He led the league in scoring in his second season with just under nine points per game. Contrast that with James Harden’s 32.2 points per game average this season and one can see that it was quite a different game back in Moe’s time. Pro basketball was in its start-up phase, with leagues and teams launching, failing, and restarting. During this time, and by necessity born of the pro game’s instability, Moe played with various teams that are now of a bygone era, including
