HOF Notes: Allen Excited for Gymnastics Facility

Some members of the Nebraska Athletic Department, including longtime athletic trainer Jerry Weber and men's gymnastics coach Chuck Chmelka, had invited Francis Allen to lunch one day last spring.
 
Allen, the retired, colorful and legendary Nebraska men's gymnastics coach, grew suspicious.
 
"I thought, 'This is kind of weird,' " the 75-year-old Allen said. "Then they said, 'You're going into the Hall of Fame.' I said, 'Oh, s---.' "
 
Both honored and surprised he would become only the third coach to join the five-year-old Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame – joining football coaches Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne – Allen said he couldn't consider it a dream come true, because, frankly, he'd never dreamt about such a thing.
 
"Well, I had dreams about Devaney before, because I hung out with him," Allen said. "You can imagine those…"
 
Allen, in an interview outside Memorial Stadium in August, then veered off topic with stories of golf trips and Bloody Marys and Devaney hawking tickets on Vine Street for gymnastics meets.
 
He eventually returned to the topic at hand.
 
Well, sort of.
 
Allen used his Hall of Fame selection to deflect attention from himself to the $14 million gymnastics training facility adjacent to the north side of the Devaney Sports Center. It's under construction, with the target completion date in January.
 
"That's probably as big of a highlight as me going into the Hall of Fame," Allen said. "This is a dream come true. This is a dream come true. I've actually dreamt about this before, about having the luxury gym."
 
Allen, the longest-tenured coach in the history of Nebraska Athletics, coached for 40 years and led the Huskers to eight national championships, including five in a row from 1979-83. His last national title came in 1994.
 
Perhaps not coincidentally, Allen remembers another significant event from that same year – the first time a prized recruit came to Lincoln and said thanks, but no thanks; your practice gym is too small.
 
"He said, 'I know your record, I know you're hard to work for and you get results done, but I want a bigger and better gym,' " Allen said.
 
"The next three or four years, I had the number one kid in, they all did the same thing. They said, 'Your gym's too small,' and they'd go to OU. Well, OU won championships out of their butt with these kids. I would've had them, and it was just like a rollover."
 
No longer, Allen said, will recruits be able to use facilities as an excuse to say no to Nebraska in favor of Oklahoma.
 
"Oh, it's going to be something, I'm telling ya," Allen said of the 46,000-square foot practice facility, which will have two gyms. The men and women will also have their own training rooms inside the building, which will include locker rooms, newer equipment, a hydraulic system and offices.
 
"Combined, men's and women's, there's nothing like it anywhere in the United States," Allen said.
 
"So when a recruit comes in, boy or girl, they're going to be like, 'Wow.' Especially the men. But between the two, it's going to be the best complex in the country. That means that our recruiting is really going to step up."
 
Allen thinks of how the late Devaney, who always supported gymnastics, would appreciate the addition. He also credited the former Nebraska Director of Athletics for helping Allen's career.
 
"If it hadn't been for his consistent putting up with my crap," Allen said, "I'd have been gone."
 
Allen, a Lincoln High School graduate who was a high school all-around state champion, lettered as a gymnast at Nebraska from 1962-64. A physical education major, he graduated in 1965 and stayed as an assistant for four years under coach Jake Geier, then replacing him as head coach in 1970.
 
"When I first started with the program, we had hardly any money," Allen said. "We just kept working, and Bob just kept putting up with everything. I'd make mistakes, do something, spend too much money.
 
"I'd go to the business office and they'd go, 'You're $57,000 over your budget! Are you out of your mind!' And they'd call Bob up and he'd say, 'We got third in the Big Eight last year from last the year before. Cover it. Let's go,' "
 
Allen remembers the first time his team won the Big Eight Tournament, hosted at the NU Coliseum.
 
"We packed the place," Allen said. "There were people in line clear out to 14th street, waiting for tickets. So Bob gets a roll of tickets and goes out in the street, and he's hawking tickets. It was hilarious.'

"He wouldn't micromanage. He'd always say to me, 'I did some tumbling, my kids did some tumbling, I always cherish what you all are going with those athletes. I appreciate you, so leave me alone and get to work.' "
 
Born in Cleveland, Allen moved to Lincoln when he was 2 months old. His father was a trucker and a meat cutter, his mother a waitress. As a child, he had a neighbor with a trampoline who taught Allen and his friends basic gymnastics skills.
 
A student at Everett Middle School, Allen's gym teacher was a "crazy gymnastics fanatic," too.
 
"He put a pommel horse in the middle of the basketball court and told the players they'd have to dribble around it, that it'd be there all winter, so get used to it," Allen said. "Then he took out the horse and put in parallel bars the next week, then the high bar the week after that.
 
"And I think everybody but one guy from our state championship team (at Lincoln High) was from Everett."
 
Allen suffered a broken neck in high school while "screwing around" on a trampoline; he could move his extremities but not his head or neck.
 
"They put me in the hospital and put me in traction," he said, "and seven days later I was out, back in the gym, working out again."
 
He was a junior in college when Allen knew he not only wanted to coach gymnastics, but also become the best gymnastics coach he could be.
 
Consider that goal met.
 
In addition to the eight national titles under Allen, Nebraska finished as the NCAA runner-up seven times while posting 20 top-five national finishes. His gymnasts also won 42 individual national titles, including nine NCAA all-around crowns, and claimed 171 All-America awards.
 
At the conference level, Nebraska won 14 team championships and produced 92 individual champions. Allen also coached four Nissen-Emery award winners as the nation's top gymnast and tutored 11 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans. 


 
Suter Joins Allen
 
Allen entered the Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday alongside one of his former gymnasts, Wes Suter.
 
"That's about as special as you can get," said Suter, who last year saw former teammate and roommate, Tom Schlesinger, also join the Hall of Fame. "That was awfully cool to see Tom go into the Hall of Fame, but to be able to go in with Francis, means a lot to me.
 
"My wife and I were just talking about what a special coach he was, because it's hard to find a coach who's so well-respected and so well-liked. He got along with Bob Devaney just as well he did with Tom Osborne and Charlie McBride."
 
As a freshman, Suter helped Nebraska to the 1983 NCAA championship and 45-0 record. The week before the NCAA Championships, Suter broke his finger but was still able to compete on floor exercise, vault and high bar.
 
"It's the kind of thing you explain to your kids. Things aren't always going to be perfect," Suter said. "You just have to trust God and trust your abilities. It's really about the relationships you build with your teammates and your coaches. It's a lot like what Coach (Scott) Frost talks about now with culture. We had that back then."
 
The Huskers finished in the top five at the NCAA Championships in each of Suter's four seasons, including first or second three times. 
 
"Those were kids that they came here, they wanted to win," Allen said. "They wanted (assistant) Jim Howard and I to coach them, and they wanted to win. There was no, 'Ah, if we get second place, that's OK.' There was none of that."
 
In Allen, Suter remembers a coach who worked tirelessly to develop a fan base and create excitement for gymnastics.
 
"He was a character," Suter said. "Whether it was starting things up with Oklahoma and their coaching staff and their fan base, there was nobody better at stirring the pot and getting us fired up for competitions."
 
Suter was also honored to join Devaney in the Hall of Fame. Suter said he developed a strong relationship with Devaney, who gladly wrote Suter's first letter of recommendation, at Suter's request.
 
Suter compared Devaney to current Director of Athletics Bill Moos, and drew many comparisons between the state of Nebraska Athletics now, and when Suter was a student-athlete here.
 
"You have Bob Devaney and Bill Moos. You have Coach Osborne and Coach Frost," Suter said. "You have Coach (Terry) Pettit and Coach (John) Cook. You had Francis and now Chuck Chmelka and Jim Hartung.
 
"You still have Husker Power, you still have the fan base, you still have the academic support. I'm as excited now for the kids who go to school as I was 35 years ago."


 
Wistrom Pleased With Frost
           
Grant Wistrom, also a member of the 2019 class for the Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame, sees many of the same attributes in Scott Frost the coach as he remembers in Scott Frost the football player.
 
The duo helped Nebraska to the 1997 national championship – the third title in four seasons for Wistrom, a first-team All-American, Lombardi Award winner and Big 12 Conference Defensive Player of the Year.
 
Wistrom said Frost tempers his mental toughness, quick thinking under fire and his ability to adjust when things go awry – which they tend to do on a football field.
 
"I don't think I gave him enough credit when he was our quarterback for the talents he possessed to do that," Wistrom said Friday before his Hall of Fame induction. "Only looking back on it now do you realize how good of a player he really was at managing the game, and it's carried over to being an even better coach."
 
Wistrom said Frost has done an outstanding job of changing the culture and attitude of players in just his second season leading the program.
 
"The biggest indicator I saw that 'This is going to be exciting,' is when you see the guys in the middle of (fall camp), not the first practice, excited to come," he said. "They're getting their brains kicked in for a week, and they're still smiling and excited to come to practice.
 
"You hardly ever see that. I played football for a long time and I was never like that, I don't care how much I love football."
 
Wistrom said Frost "knows this place better than anyone could," and wholeheartedly accepted the manner in which Frost tweaked tradition of handing out Blackshirts, by having former Blackshirts themselves present them.
 
"He knows how much it means to his teammates," Wistrom said of the Blackshirts, "and he knows how much it means to the guys who ever had the opportunity to wear one."
 
Reach Brian at brosenthal@huskers.com or follow him on Twitter @GBRosenthal.