AFrancis
Allen #1
By John Gaskins
Staff writer
A couple years after Francis Allen took over a lackluster Nebraska
gymnastics program in 1969, he went to Athletic Director Bob
Devaney and cut his boss a deal.
“I told him, ‘Give me the maximum number of scholarships you
can give me,’” Allen said, “’and if we’re not oneof the top three teams
in the nation in five years, get rid of me.’”
Thirty years, eight national team championships, 39 individual
national championships, 11 Olympians and 160 All-Americans later,
Allen, the No. 3 coach on the Daily Nebraskan Sports Century list, still
runs the program he built into a dynasty.
Allen still operates out of a tiny, old ramshackle office in the cor
ner of the program’s Devaney Center facility.
Mostof all, Allen still loves to be out there on the mats, fixing rou
tines and turning boys into men. And he still has the human touch that
inspires the people around him.
“He not only created a team here, he created a family,” said junior
NU gymnast and 1999 NCAA All-Around Champion Jason
_Hardabura. “He teaches us a lot about gymnastics and a lot about life.
He teaches us to respect everyone we meet and everyone who walks in
the gym. He likes to joke around and not take life too seriously. He
lives his life - doesn’t let his life live him.”
Jim Howard has spent many years in the gym with Allen. They
competed for the Huskers together and became head coaches at differ
ent programs not too long after. Howard came over from Wisconsin
La Crosse to become Allen’s right-hand assistant in 1976.
Allen and Howard recruited future Olympians Jim Hartung and
Phil Cahoy, who led Nebraska to four of its five consecutive national
titles from 1979-83. Three more titles followed in ’88, ’90 and ’94.
“The thing coaches here love about our jobs is developing a prod
uct,” Howard said. “When you see that product perform well, it’s a
reflection of the work you’ve done and the athlete has done. That’s very
rewarding.”
Allen is not only an icon in Nebraska but all over the gymnastics
world. He has coached two U.S. Olympic teams, won three National
Coach of the Year awards, was the first American to set foot at the
Chinese gymnastics headquarters.
But he always ends up back in that tiny office and gym, fixing rou
tines and joking around. And'he doesn’t plan on doing anything else
anytime soon.
“I’ve never looked back on anything I’ve done and said to myself,
‘Oh, God, I wish I didn’t do that,”’ Allen said. “I can’t imagine doing
anything else. I enjoy the gym too much.”
By Brandon Schulte
Staff writer
In his 23 years as head coach of the Nebraska volleyball team,
Terry Pettit has done a great deal - and most of it has involved winning.
The sheer numbers are staggering - 726 career victories, a win
ning percentage of .820 and 18 All-Americans coached.
That adds up to 20 conference championships, 17 straight NCAA
tournament appearances, six final four trips and a national title (1995).
These accomplishments in and of themselves make Pettit an easy
selection to the No. 4 spot on the Daily Nebraskan Sports Century list.
But more important than all of the victories are two questions. Why
does he continue to coach after achieving nearly everything a coach
can, and what about him led to this amazing success?
Pettit may have been to the final four six times in the last 13 years,
but there are players on the current team who haven’t been there.
Therefore, Pettit said his experiences don’t make any difference.
“The (important thing) is the experience that the student athlete on
the team gets. I try to recreate or provide the opportunity for them to
experience as much as they possibly can. I don’t have any less desire
for the team to excel just because we have in the past.”
The drive usually begins at the start of June and continues to the
middle of December. For those six months, Pettit’s life revolves around
the next opponent. Through it all, each season has been different as the
sport has evolved during his career.
Where the Big Eight conference once consisted of Nebraska and
the “little sisters of the poor” as the Comhuskers racked up 16 straight
conference titles from ’77 to ’92, the Big 12 conference features tough
opponents every match. The interesting matches coupled with the
physics of inertia make it difficult for him to leave the sport.
“It would take a lot of energy to stop (coaching) and a lot of ener
gy to try and find something else to do,” Pettit said. “The program has
grown. Maybe if the program had been where it’s at now for 23 years,
10 years might have cured me of it. But the sport has grown dramati
cally so that it’s different than it was 15 years ago. The change has
piqued my interests. The program has gotten better and has been com
peting at higher and higher levels.”
Pettit s drive to succeed transfers to his players. Nebraska has been
. in the national volleyball rankings every week for the last 17 years. He
•constantly pushes his players to go places they’ve never been before.
The apex came at the 1995 final four in Massachusetts when
Nebraska knocked ofFTexas in the final to claim its first national title.
Penn State Coach Russ Rose has coached both with and against
Pettit. He said that if any person merits awards for coaching, it’s Pettit.
“I’ve admired his work from afar,” Rose said. ‘He’s done a great
job for volleyball in the state of Nebraska and is an ambassador ofcol
lege volleyball. He deserves whatever honors that have been bestowed
upon him.”
By Brandon Schulte
Staff writer
Without a head football coach going
into the 1929 season, Nebraska recruited
Hall-of-Fame coach, Dana X. Bible, from
Texas A&M.
Bible brought a tradition of winning
and a fiery spirit to every program he
coached. In his 33 seasons as a head foot
ball coach at three schools (Texas A&M,
Nebraska and Texas), Bible racked up 182
wins against 71 losses and 23 ties. He was
the Nebraska football coach from 1929
1936 while also serving stints as men’s golf
coach and athletic director. These feats
combined to rate him as the No. 5 coach on
the Daily Nebraskan Sports Century list.
« As one of two living members from
Bible’s teams at Nebraska, Paul Amen
(1935-37), recalled one particularly mov
ing halftime speech.
“One game we were down 7-0 at half
time and hadn’t been playing well,” Amen
-i-fc O Gary
Pepin
By Joshua Camenzind
Staff writer
Track and Field Coach Gary Pepin
cannot name his favorite team or his
favorite athlete. That may be because for
the last 16 years he has produced so many.
Pepin, who arrived at NU in 1980, was
looking to better a solid team. The
Comhuskers did not have to wait long for
changes to take place.
said. “When we were sup
posed to go out for the second
half, he stood in front of the
door to the field and wouldn’t let us go out
until we were ready to play. He was a little
man, and all of the players were bigger than
him, but he kept us from going out the door.
That stirred the players up, and we went out
and won the game.”
Bible may be best known for starting
the 12th man tradition at A&M. Aggie bas
ketball player E. King Gill was in the
stands of the Dixie Classic, the precursor to
the Cotton Bowl.
After several players went down with
injuries in the first half, Bible sent the call
for Gill to suit up at halftime in case any
more players were injured. Gill stood on
the sideline the rest of the game but wasn't
needed. To this date, Aggie students stand
all game in case the team needs them.
In his eight-year career at Nebraska,
Bible compiled a 50-15-7 record that
included six Big Six titles. His 1936 team
yielded zero touchdowns to conference
opponents on its way to the Bix Six title.
The entire starting lineup was on the all
conference team that year.
The NU women have won 17 straight
indoor conference meets and have taken
15 straight outdoor meets. The men have
taken eight indoor and five outdoor titles in
his tenure. In the early 1980s, Pepin,
ranked No. 6 on the Daily Nebraskan
Sports Century list, won three national
women’s championships.
Pepin is proud of his team’s consisten
cy throughout his career.
“The thing I am most proud about my
career is the number of consistent years
with good teams,” Pepin said. “We have
not had very many poor teams.”
Lately, Pepin has admitted that his job
has been getting tougher.
“There is a lot more paperwork
involved, and the new conference is much
tougher than the Big Eight,” Pepin said.
The harder conference has made
Pepin’s assistants that much more valuable
to him. The program has four coaches with
more than 13 years of experience, who
help ease some of Pepin’s workload.
Impressive as the statistics are, Bible
was never one to stroll the sidelines as
today’s coaches do. In those days coaches
weren’t allowed to call plays or directly
influence the game during play.
Bible’s main coaching was done at
practice, he became a master at readying
his teamO against opponents.
“He was a person that was a believer in
preparation,” Amen said. “He saw the good
at whatever we did. Win or lose, he got us to
put it aside and get ready for the next
game.”
Following the ’36 season, Bible was
offered a 20-year contract for an at-the
time eye-popping salary of $15,000 a year
to coach Texas and be its athletic director.
By looking at Bible’s win-loss record,
one can see he was a great coach and moti
vator, but one of the five All-Americans he
coached at Nebraska, Sam Francis (1934
36), remembers Bible as a kind, father-like
figure more than anything else.
“He was a little like my dad,” Francis
said. “A real leader but more casual, a little
on the order of Tom Osborne. He even
showed up at the U.S. Olympic trials when
I qualified for the Olympics.”
“Everyone in the university has been
very supportive,” Pepin said, “from the
Athletic Department to my assistants.”
A long-time goal of Pepin’s has been to
improve the facilities for his team. He has
worked long and hard for a new outdoor
and indoor track and finally, that work has
paid off. The outdoor track will be finished
by the spring and work on the indoor track
will begin after the indoor season ends.
“It will be great for the school,” Pepin
said. “But it has been a long, hard process
for me, and it has been a long time from
start to finish.”
The improvements are part of Pepin’s
goal to leave the next Husker coach in a
better situation than he was in when he
took over the program. His peers and
friends say, no drop off should be expected.
“Gary is an outstanding coach,” Head
Swimming Coach Cal Bentz said. “He is a
hard driver - complete detail person. You
have to have more energy and think ahead
of him to beat him.”
Ewald O.
By Darren Ivy
Senior staff writer
A man often forgotten amid the great
coaches in Nebraska history was Ewald
“Jumbo” Stiehm.
Fifty years before either Bob Devaney
or Tom Osborne started pacing the side
lines of Memorial Stadium, Stiehm put up
numbers that were even more impressive
than the two modern-day legends, and he
did it in two sports.
In five years at Nebraska, Stiehm’s
football teams went 35-2-3 for a .913 win
ning percentage, bettering Devaney’s .829
and Osborne’s .836. As a basketball coach
for four years, Stiehm compiled a 56-14
record or .800 winning percentage, which
ranks him fourth among Comhusker bas
ketball coaches.
To this day, Stiehm, who ranks No. 7 on
the Daily Nebraskan Sports Century list,
continues to be the only coach in Missouri
Valley, Big Eight or Big 12 Conference his
tory to win conference titles for basketball
and football in the same academic year.
The “Stiehm Rollers,” as his football
teams were called, won five Missouri
Valley Conference titles, had a school
record 34-game unbeaten string and laid
claim to mythical national championships
in 1914 and 1915.
“Stiehm’s teams weren’t very big, but
the players had a reputation for being tough
and playing nearly the entire game,” said
NU football historian Mike Babcock.
“Stiehm was a stem disciplinarian and
rarely substituted even if players had minor
injuries.”
A standout basketball and football
player at Wisconsin, the 6-foot-4 Stiehm
came to Nebraska in 1911 to coach foot
ball. It is not known how old he was when
he started, but he was just three years
removed from college.
The next year, he took over for O.F.
Field as the first full-time basketball coach
at Nebraska.
Nebraska
shared the
Missouri Valley
Conference
championship
with Kansas in 1912 and 1914 and won the
title outright in 1913 under Stiehm’s leader
ship. The 1913-14 team was “so fast, it
took a movie camera to catch ‘em,” accord
ing to the Comhusker student yearbook.
Stiehm’s teams won three conference
titles and would have won a fourth in 1916,
but he was forced out after coaching the
first game. Sam Waugh, who replaced
Stiehm, compiled a 13-1 record with
Stiehm’s players.
Stiehm had planned to remain at
Nebraska through the basketball season
before leaving to become coach and athlet
ic director at the University of Indiana. But
the Nebraska Athletic Board decided to
replace him, and he left on bad terms with
the school.'
ft Tim
Neumann
Peshtigo, Wis. His favorite
team growing up was the
Wisconsin Badger foot
• ball team. It was during a
1974 Badgers game that
Neumann made the trans
By Brock Wendlandt
Staff writer
Tim Neumann takes a lot of pride in
being a Nebraskan.
Neumann, head coach of the
Nebraska wrestling team for the past 14
years, is the winningest coach in school
history, with 189 wins. He has led the
Nebraska program to two conference
championships and helped it be recog
nized as a prominent program,
But the road hasn’t been easy. The Big
12 and the former Big Eight are home to
three of the “Big Four” schools in colle
giate wrestling: Iowa, Iowa State,
Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.
“There’s not too many situations (in
other conferences) where you can be
ranked sixth in the nation and still be
fourth in your conference,” Neumann
said.
Be that as it may, the Big 12’s elite
nature has complimented the competitive
drive of Neumann, deemed No. 8 on the
Daily Nebraskan Sports Century list. His
program is developing into one that takes
high school wrestlers and turns them into
World and Olympic team members.
With the success Neumann has had at
NU, it becomes obvious why he would
boast of being from the Comhusker state.
But Neumann is in fact a native of
formation into a Nebraskan.
“I watched Wisconsin beat Nebraska
that day,” Neumann said. “And I watched
the interview with Coach (Bob) Devaney
(who was athletic director by this time)
after the game. I heard Devaney talk about
the tradition at Nebraska and how a loss
like that was not accepted. I grew very
interested in that tradition.”
After wrestling for three years at
Northern Michigan, Neumann trans
ferred to NU in 1978. In 1983, he came to
NU as an assistant coach. He took over as
interim head coach at the end of the 1984
season.
Coach Devaney told Neumann he
needed to win twice as many matches as
the previous season’s 8-14 record, he said.
He responded by leading the Huskers
to a ^th-place finish at the NCAA meet
and a 16-5 dual record.
After 14 seasons, Neumann has
achieved almost all of his goals. His
wrestlers have won three individual titles,
36 All-America awards, 20 conference
titles and his teams have finished in the
top 10 four times.
But one goal remains.
“Just like I’ve heard Coach (Tom)
Osborne say, I’m really enjoying the jour
ney to the championship,” Neumann said.
“I think the attitude is right in this pro
gram, and eventually a championship will
probably be won.”