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Pitt, Steelers once at Bedford

Golf and football are sports not typically mentioned in the same sentence.

However, a little more than seven decades ago, the two pastimes were intertwined in a most unusual way as the Bedford Elks Country Club was used to host the preseason training camp for the 1947 Pitt Panther football team.

Unusual as it sounds, the Panthers’ successful two-week camp was followed immediately afterward by a week-long, in-season, training session by Pittsburgh Steelers.

The history of the Bedford Elks facility goes back as far as the late 1800s, when a modest-sized resort opened for business just south of town.

The newly established Arandale Hotel attracted guests by offering amenities like, fishing, hiking and horseback riding. By the late 1920s, a nine-hole golf course, still in operation today, was opened for play.

In 1946, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks purchased the resort. The newly-formed Elks Lodge #1707 would continue operating the resort’s facilities, which included the golf course, bowling alleys, restaurant and large hotel (which was eventually razed in the mid-1970s).

In early 1947, Elks trustee John Buchanan, a former Pitt football star, used his many Pittsburgh connections to consummate a deal that would bring the Panthers to Bedford for their late-summer training camp.

At that time, college classes didn’t start until mid-September, which allowed new head coach Walter Milligan to begin his two-week training camp right after the Labor Day holiday.

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, 56 football players met at Pitt’s Oakland campus for physicals. Later that afternoon, the entire squad — including coaches, trainers, players and, yes, newspaper reporters — loaded into three buses and headed toward the mountains of central Pennsylvania which surround the Bedford Elks Country Club.

For the duration of Panther training camp, the lodge’s hotel facilities would be fully occupied by the Pitt football team. A special dietician was employed to prepare the daily meals, and arrangements were made to launder the squad’s uniforms on a daily basis.

Amazingly, the Elks golf course was shut down, and the eighth fairway was marked off as a regulation football field, including a set of goalposts situated along the eighth green.

Star Pitt players like quarterback Bill Bruno and running backs Bimbo Cecconi and Tony DiMatteo took part in the practice sessions held twice daily. Local newspapers detailed the team’s every move, with one front-page edition displaying a photo of the players cooling off in nearby Shover’s Run while still clothed in full gear.

The Panthers’ two weeks at Bedford were spent preparing for a demanding schedule that would include an opening matchup with defending Rose Bowl champion Illinois, followed by powerhouses like Notre Dame, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio State, Minnesota, Purdue, Penn State and West Virginia.

“We have an awful lot of work to do,” coach Milligan said as his team broke camp and returned to Pittsburgh.

The team finished the season with a 1-8 record, the lone win being against Ohio State.

By the time the Panthers departed Bedford, Buchanan was hard at work convincing yet another team to utilize the local resort. A mere four days after the Pitt squad finished its camp, the mighty Pittsburgh Steelers arrived at the Elks Lodge.

During the 1940s, the Steelers held their regular preseason training camp at Alliance College in Cambridge Springs. After camp closed in 1947, the Steelers opened their season with a win against the Detroit Lions on Sept. 21 at Forbes Field.

At the conclusion of that game, the Steelers were in need of a temporary practice facility since the Pittsburgh Pirates would be using the home field for their final week of the 1947 campaign.

The Bedford Elks Lodge was a perfect fit, and the Steelers were able to use the gridiron already laid out on the club’s eighth fairway for scrimmages. Head coach Jock Sutherland had just one concern — the hardness of the field.

His worries were quickly appeased, however, when a crew of Bedford volunteer fireman arrived to spray the fairway with 80,000 gallons of water pumped from nearby Shover’s Run.

After their weeklong practice session, the Steelers returned back to Pittsburgh to square off against the Los Angeles Rams. Despite a loss that week, the Steelers finished their season at 8-4, notching the only playoff appearance in the Steelers’ first 30 years of existence.

Despite conducting successful training sessions for the Panthers and Steelers in 1947, there were no return visits the following year. It was customary during that time for teams to re-locate practice facilities frequently.

With that said, during one late-summer stretch in 1947, the Bedford Elks Lodge was the football mecca of Pennsylvania.

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