Legendary Men’s Gymnastics Coach Francis Allen Calls it Quits
Posted on 04 June 2009 by admin
Legendary Nebraska Head Gymnastics Coach Francis Allen announced his retirement effective July 1. Allen has had an amazing career which spans forty years, in which his teams won eight national championships. Hired at the age of 26, he is still a very young man.
Among the highlights of Allen’s career was coaching Nebraska gymnast Trent Dimas to a gold medal on high bar at the ’92 Barcelona Olympics, which were the games where Vitaly Scherbo won an unprecedented six gold medals.
Allen had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with such luminary football coaches as Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne during his coaching tenure at Nebraska. Not to mention he witnessed the amazing feats of Heisman Trophy winners Johnny Rodgers, Mike Rozier and Eric Crouch.
It remains to be seen who will replace Allen, but current Nebraska Assistant Coach Chuck Chmelka will be the most logical man to fill those big shoes.
June 5th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
This is devastating news! This program should have been restructured a decade ago when the program was in a giant whole rather than in this crisis. Who knows if the program will continue past 2009. Check out this article
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=3918&u_sid=10646505
June 5th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
It appears that the 2010 season is safe, but beyond that is anybody’s guess. Hard to believe that they would let Chmelka and Hartung loose. Perhaps these guys can get things going again. $500K/year to keep a gymnastics program going is chump change for a BCS school like Nebraska. Instead of cutting off MAG, Osborne should concentrate on beefing up his languishing cash-cow football program, which has been on a downward spiral ever since getting spanked by Miami in the 2002 Rose Bowl.