Luke Dalton and his father, Chris, pose with the family’s plane—a 1967 Cessna 172H—that has been in the family for three generations. Photo courtesy of Luke Dalton
Ball State offensive lineman Luke Dalton is preparing for a career in aviation, continuing his family’s legacy while balancing football, flight school, and his academic goals.
There are touchdowns and then there are “touchdowns.” Luke Dalton has plenty of experience with both.
As a talented offensive lineman on the Ball State football team, Mr. Dalton enjoys paving the way for his teammates to help them reach the end zone on any given Saturday afternoon in the Fall.
But what sets the 6-foot-5, 300-pound Crystal Lake, Ill., native apart is what he does off the field: training to become a professional pilot.
When he’s not traveling around the Mid-American Conference on a bus with his fellow Cardinals, Mr. Dalton often finds himself in the air high above the Delaware County Regional Airport in Muncie in his family’s small plane.
Aviation has been a fixture in the Dalton family for generations. Mr. Dalton’s grandfather flew in the Civil Air Patrol and served in the military; his father has been a pilot for more than 30 years. All three have flown the same aircraft—a 1967 Cessna 172H.
“This is the third generation,” Mr. Dalton said. “I’m actually flying in the same airplane.”
And while he would love to practice flying more advanced, higher-end aircraft, Mr. Dalton has perspective on these early stages of his aviation journey.
“When you start your driver’s ed classes, they don’t put you in a fancy sports car or a massive pickup truck—they put you in a compact car,” he said. “It’s not the most comfortable thing for a four-hour flight, but it’s a blessing to be able to fly that plane because of the convenience, as well as the emotion and history it carries.”
Standing at 6-foot-5, Luke Dalton takes a selfie in a “snug” cockpit during a training flight. Photo courtesy of Luke Dalton
Mr. Dalton has spent just as much time in the air as he has in the classroom, where he’s working toward a degree in psychological science with a minor in business.
“I was really interested in psychological investigations, whether through criminal analysis or clinical work,” he said. “And then my dad’s always been a business guy and has started his own companies, so I was fascinated to learn more about that.”
Mr. Dalton’s path to the cockpit began after a setback on the field during his freshman season at the University of Cincinnati. After suffering a devastating knee injury, he found himself “sidelined pretty hard with a long recovery.”
“The unique thing you find is when you invest so much of your life and time into football, and you face a setback like that, you can see the tangible goals that your teammates are obtaining. Football was just something that I had to put on pause,” he recalled. “I needed to find a passion I could invest in and chip away at to obtain the goals, and that became aviation.”
Not long after the injury, he took a flight with his dad to visit a high school friend in New York.
Luke Dalton takes the field for the Ball State football team in a game at Scheumann Stadium.
“My dad said I was going to fly,” he said. “So, I flew most of that flight up to New York, and I just fell in love with it.”
When they returned home, Mr. Dalton signed up for flying lessons near the Cincinnati campus. After transferring to Ball State—where his mother, Lisa, earned degrees in marketing and journalism in 1988—he continued training toward a commercial license.
“The end goal is to build a career and either go down the corporate pilot route, such as flying for charter companies, or hopefully one day jump into one of the major airlines like Delta, United, or American,” he said.
Whether on the field or in the air, Mr. Dalton continues to chart his own course—steadily, confidently, and at full throttle.
