Dick Van Raaphorst
American football player (1942–2020)
Richard William Van Raaphorst (December 10, 1942 – October 3, 2020) was an American professional football placekicker in the American Football League (AFL) for the San Diego Chargers. He also was a member of the Dallas Cowboys in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at Ohio State University.
Early life
Van Raaphorst attended Charlevoix High School, before moving on to Ohio State University.
He was named the starter of the 1961 team coached by Woody Hayes that won the Big Ten Conference, but the Ohio State faculty council wanting to show that football was not overemphasized, voted against sending the Buckeyes to the Rose Bowl. The University of Minnesota was the replacement team that beat UCLA 21-3. He was injured as a junior.
As a senior, he broke the school and conference distance record with a 48-yard field goal. The next game he broke it again with a 49-yard field goal. He also set a record with 6 field goals in Big Ten Conference games and 8 in the season.
The public source identifies “Dick Van Raaphorst” as american football player (1942–2020). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dick, Raaphorst and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5273499. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2020 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dick Van Raaphorst” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.