UWEC Athletics Hall of Fame
Rick Dahl started 114 of 116 games during his Blugold career, playing alongside All-Americans Tony Carr as a freshman and Chester Smith his junior and senior seasons. He would have started every game during his career except for a knee injury suffered during his senior season. That kept him out of two games and curtailed his playing time in two others. A guard, who once scored 56 points in a prep game at Altoona High School, Dahl shot 52 percent from the field for his career while scoring 1,074 points. He played before the advent of the three-point line in college basketball. He also had 392 career assists, an average of 3.3 per game. Dahl was the recipient of the NAIA’s Emil Liston Award in 1983-84, an award presented to the top junior student-athlete in the country. He was a two-time All-WSUC pick and three-time team captain or co-captain. He was the Blugolds’ Scholar-Athlete pick to the WSUC in 1984-85 at a time when each school nominated one junior or senior student-athlete for recognition each year. During his career the Blugolds were 90-28 overall, 48-16 in conference play and 8-3 in post-season play.
Dahl earned his marketing degree from UW-Eau Claire in 1985. At the time of his induction, he was the owner and president of Metrolift, a company he started in the Chicago metro area in 1991. The company, located in Sugar Grove, employs 45 people and provides state of the art aerial lift and mobile construction equipment. It is one of the largest single location rental companies in the United States and the leading full-service aerial lift company in greater Chicago. Dahl started his career in sales with Cooper Tire and then worked for Timesavers, an aerial lift equipment company before starting his own business. He has served as president of the Illinois Equipment Distributors and an at-large director of the Associated Equipment Distributors.
