St. Joseph-Ogden 2023 Hall of Fame: Brian Allen
EDITOR’S NOTE: St. Joseph-Ogden will induct five new members into its Hall of Fame on Sept. 15, 2023 at halftime of the school’s homecoming football game against Chillicothe IVC. The new inductees are Brian Allen (Class of 1993), Jerry Hewerdine (teacher and coach), Marvin Lee Flessner (Class of 1951), Susan Pensinger (teacher and coach) and Randy Wolken (Class of 1968). Today’s profile: Brian Allen.
By FRED KRONER
Brian Allen’s path to unparalleled success as a distance runner at St. Joseph-Ogden High School followed failures in both cross-country and track and field.
By the time Allen graduated from SJ-O, he was the school’s first boys’ state champion in track and field. And, he won two events.
Thirty years later, he remains the only male to win a track state title for the Spartans individually. His times in the 800 meters (1:55.4) and the 1,600 meters (4:22.9) are still school records.
In cross-country, Allen is the only SJ-O male athlete with two top-10 finishes at state. His fourth-place performance as a junior is tied for the school’s best effort ever at state. He finished seventh as a senior, providing him with two of the school’s top five all-time top state performances.
“Brian is arguably the most successful and certainly the most decorated male distance runner in history at St. Joseph-Ogden, a school that has built a reputation over the last 35 years as having one of the top distance running programs in the state,” said Jim Acklin, a Hall-of-Fame coach who was responsible for training the majority of the Spartans’ long-distance runners since 1979.
Allen is one of five individuals who will be inducted into the SJ-O Hall of Fame at halftime of the school’s homecoming football game on Friday (Sept. 15).
Though Allen’s prep career ended with a flourish, it started with a whimper.
He arrived in high school in the fall of 1989 as a 13-year-old freshman.
“He had a lot of talent, but we decided to part ways,” said Jerry Hewerdine, the cross-country coach. “I cut him his freshman year.”
Acklin had Allen in one of his biology classes that fall and said he saw a streak of “orneriness.”
Added Acklin: “He told me he planned on going out for track (as a freshman) and I came close to saying, ‘Don’t bother.’”
He kept the thought to himself, however, and the rest – as the saying goes – is history.
In retrospect, Acklin developed an idea of what was transpiring.
“He was a full year younger than his classmates and a lot of it was a maturity thing,” he said. “Once he got to the workouts, he’d do exactly what you asked.”
Hewerdine noticed the difference in the subsequent years.
“He matured physically and mentally and became the leader,” Hewerdine said.
A decade earlier, Allen had started in kindergarten as a 3-year-old. He didn’t have his fourth birthday until halfway through the semester, the day before Halloween.
Allen said he wasn’t sure of his priorities his first year in high school.
“I went out for cross-country my freshman year, but left the team before the end of the season,” he said. “It seemed strange that I quit my freshman year considering that I would go on to be the No. 1 runner on the team for two state championships, but I didn’t feel connected to the team my first year.
“I was still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to focus on during high school and that first season was a causality.”
Acklin began to see the possibilities for Allen during his freshman track season.
“When he ran a 5:08 in the 1,600 as a freshman, I was thinking he could amount to something,” Acklin said. “His sophomore year in cross-country was not spectacular, but something clicked his sophomore year in track.
“He had a breakthrough race at Mahomet. I remember looking at my watch and thinking, ‘Is my watch right?’ He ran around the 4:30s.
“From that point, I realized he had a lot of potential.”
The second setback that Allen experienced came during the finals of the Class 1A state track and field meet in the 3,200-meter relay his junior year (May, 1992).
The Spartans anticipated a tight battle to the finish after the top two relay qualifiers were within seconds of each other following the preliminary round. Top-seeded Maple Park Kaneland ran 8:08.50 followed closely by SJ-O at 8:08.71. Each school would shave off more than three seconds in the finals.
Allen was the anchor runner for the Spartans and received the baton in second place of the championship race.
“My teammates had put me in a great position, just 10 or 15 meters off the leader,” Allen said. “We had a shot to win the state title.
“I went out hard and chased down the No. 1 runner (from Kaneland) during the first of two laps.”
With 200 meters to go, Allen pulled even with his competitor, but was in the outside lane going around the curve and couldn’t nab the lead.
He was within a step of the Kaneland runner with 50 meters remaining.
Meanwhile, Wheaton St. Francis’ fast-charging anchor found an opening on the inside of the track and literally took the lead for the first time as he stepped across the finish line.
The winning time was 8:05.12. The next two schools were separated by less than half a second. Kaneland’s time was 8:05.17 and SJ-O finished the eight-lap relay in 8:05.49.
“The win was right there, but I wasn’t able to pull it off,” Allen said. “Two of my teammates were seniors and would not have another shot.
“That experience changed the way I raced the 800 and 1,600 meters.”
Allen shifted his strategy to being the aggressor from the outset.
“I decided whenever possible, I would not allow a race to be decided in the final 50, 100 or even 200 meters,” he said. “I would set a tough pace if needed, make the field work for it, race from the front to control the race as much as possible and make my move earlier, going all out with 300 or 400 meters to go to dominate the race.”
Acklin credited Allen’s work ethic for his achievements in his final two years, which also included a seventh-place state finish as a junior in the 1,600 meters.
“The summer before his junior year, he was part of a crew that trained relentlessly,” Acklin said.
Teaming up with four seniors in the fall of 1991, Allen was the top runner on SJ-O’s state championship cross-country squad which shattered the all-time IHSA record for the lowest team score at state (46 points).
Three decades later, that score stands third on the all-time IHSA Class 1A charts.
SJ-O’s 1991 team was the first of two state championship squads in a row in cross-country. Following the 1991 season the Spartans were ranked 13th in the final national poll, covering schools of all enrollments.
During the decade of the ‘90s, SJ-O won 79 straight dual meets, still third-best in IHSA history.
Allen cites numerous factors in the rapid progression of his running career, starting with “developing a strong long-distance base of running from cross-country and during the off-season.
“The real leaps in performance came as I got stronger, developed better speed and focused on the tactical components of these events.”
He capped his high school career as a senior earning the rare first-place medallions in the 800- and 1,600-meter double.
Allen’s points helped the Spartans to a six-point triumph in the team standings over Lena-Winslow.
“That’s a tougher double than the 1,600 and 3,200 because of where they fall in the meet (separated by just two events, neither of which is longer than one lap),” Acklin said.
Since the IHSA converted all races to the metric distance in 1979, just four boys from any class in the state prevailed in the 800 and 1,600 the same year.
Allen was the first to do so and his feat wasn’t matched for another 16 years.
Acklin wasn’t surprised that Allen was the first boy to pull off that double at state in 81 years.
“Brian was the best big-meet competitor that I coached,” Acklin said. “He had no trouble rising to the occasion and thrived on it.”
Allen said that Acklin was like an orchestra leader who got all of his runners to work together in perfect harmony.
“Our (cross-country) teams in ’91 and ’92 were a bunch of real characters,” he said. “We were a wild bunch.
“We fed off of each other’s energy and performed better as a team as a result.”
Rather than trying to get everyone to conform to his expectations, Acklin was a contributing member to the team camaraderie.
“There were things that brought us together,” Allen said, “the early-morning practices, the slog of running in all weather conditions and singing ‘House of the Rising Sun’ as we ran through the streets of St. Joe before school.”
Acklin knew his part.
“Coach Acklin started this by singing (the song made famous by the British rock group, The Animals) at the top of his lungs one morning just to get the energy level up,” Allen said, “and it became a thing from then on.”
Allen said the success he had individually can be traced to working out regularly with talented teammates.
“I was fortunate to be surrounded by amazing teammates that pushed me, as well as dedicated and talented coaches that supported my development,” he said. “Coach Acklin was an accomplished competitive runner.
“This was my greatest fortune as a runner. He was literally there every step of the way with me.”
If there is a frustration for Allen, then it is in what has not happened since his high school graduation.
“I am shocked the (school) records have remained and I wish they would fall,” Allen said. “I want the next generation of SJ-O athletes to experience great success, including breaking my records.
“Any time I have the opportunity to meet current-day runners at SJ-O, I urge them to go for it, set your sights on these (times) and take them down.
“U.S. distance runners across the country at the high school level are running faster and faster times. I think my records will be outpaced soon and I hope I have the chance to watch the race.”
After high school, Allen enrolled at Eastern Illinois University, where he was part of both cross-country and track and field programs under the tutelage of famed distance coach John McInerney.
“Competing at the Division I level was certainly a big step and I enjoyed the challenge,” Allen said. “I got faster and had some amazing races.”
He posted a career-best 3:53 in the 1,500 meters (equivalent to a 4:10 mile), but was unable to match the accomplishments he registered as a prep athlete.
“Unfortunately, multiple over-use injuries, including stress fractures, kept me from advancing as far as I had hoped,” Allen said. “Even as a senior in high school, I felt like I was walking a razor’s edge between peak race shape and risk of injury.
“This comes with the territory for athletes across sports training at a high level, especially distance runners with the impact compounded over many, many miles of training runs.”
Since college, Allen estimates that he has spent “thousands of miles,” on the road, but he has now shifted gears.
“I started riding my road bike more and discovered my love for riding,” he said.
He embarked on a self-supported bike trip from Illinois to Colorado in 1997 as a fund-raiser for the Marfan Syndrome Foundation and, in 2019, was part of a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles trek to raise money for the care of people living with HIV.
Allen is not totally removed from running.
“As I travel, I’ve found that going out for 4- to 6-mile runs is one of the best ways to get to know a new location,” he said. “(Recently), while visiting Berlin, I went for a run in the central park of the city called the Tiergarten.”
At EIU, Allen was a zoology major who was “fascinated” by an introductory genetics class he took. He ultimately earned a master’s degree in 1999 from Wisconsin-Madison in medical genetics.
He has made the field his life’s work, participating in cancer genetics clinical studies researching the genetic basis for inherited cancer risk conditions.
Still living in California, Allen switched to the industry side of the field and joined Myriad Genetics, “one of the first companies to develop a successful genetic test for inherited risk of cancer.”
He continued with the cutting-edge research in 2016, when he joined GRAIL, “a company founded with a mission to detect cancer earlier, when it is more curable,” he said.
The work of Allen and his colleagues was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the most notable inventions in 2022.
The designation was the result of work “developing a blood-based multi-cancer early-detection test, now called Galleri,” Allen said, “which is available in the U.S.”
Currently, Allen is vice-president of clinical development for Adela, a biotechnology company developing novel genomic-based tests for cancer and other major human diseases.
Allen and his wife, June, have a 16-year-old son, Matteo.
As for a high school running career that featured six All-State performances (five as an individual), three team state championships, two individual state titles and two still-standing school records on the track, one fact is abundantly clear: Brian Allen was ahead of his time in the early 1990s.
