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Putting this name on a court just feels right
Published: 4/20/2012 4:36 PM
Last Modified: 4/20/2012 4:36 PM

A basketball court in Salina, Kan., bears the name of Kurt Budke, the former Oklahoma State women’s basketball coach who died in a Nov. 17 plane crash.

The playing surface at Gallagher-Iba Arena is named Eddie Sutton Court in honor of the former OSU men’s coach.

There’s a grassroots movement afoot to name another court after someone with OSU ties. I’ll introduce you to him.

Johnny Allen of Pawnee started his college career as a multi-sport athlete at OSU. He transferred to Northeastern State and quarterbacked a national championship football team in 1958, earning MVP honors in a 19-13 Holiday Bowl victory over Arizona State.

Give some credit to bloodline. Allen, who has Sac & Fox and Tonkawa tribal lineage, was a relative of Jim Thorpe. They’ve got more than DNA in common. Both are in the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.

Allen played pro football in Canada with the London Lords in 1959-60, but his playing career was sabotaged by injury and he discovered a new passion: coaching.

Allen spent the bulk of his coaching career in Locust Grove, where he spent 16 seasons pulling double duty as girls and boys basketball coach. His record was 512-270 when he resigned in 1983.

You reach a lot of kids when you coach in one spot for that long. Now, 30 years after Allen coached the Pirates for the last time, some of those (no longer) kids are putting their names on a petition to name the court after the coach, who died in 2008.

One of those people sent me an email about what Allen meant to him. The person asked that his name not be used (though I’m not sure why, since the message was a nice one). Here’s what he said:

“Coach was an example and role model for me because we had a lot in common. It starts with family, race, God-given abilities/talents, traditions/customs, responsibilities to yourself and those around you, etc.

“He taught high school history and curriculum very well, but he was a role model for me and gave me perspective on how to be a successful young Native American male.

“Although we live in a place with a high population of (Native Americans), we are less than one percent of the total world’s population. And, for a young person it’s kind of hard to find positive role models that look like you!”

Naming arenas and courts after individuals can be a hot-button issue. Remember how people chose sides (why not Ed Lacy? why not Wayman Tisdale?) before Booker T. Washington’s new fieldhouse was named after former coach Nate Harris?

Your icon isn’t necessarily someone else’s icon and that’s why you can’t blame administrations for playing it safe when it comes to this sort of thing.

I’m admittedly biased on the Locust Grove situation. From the time I started first grade there until I graduated, the town had no other basketball coach except Allen. I saw how kids were drawn to him and sought his approval. Probably, he was the most influential figure in town for most of those 16 seasons and, as you can gather from the email message that I relayed, he was influential in ways I didn’t realize at the time.

This is not my decision and I’m not pretending it is. But Johnny Allen Court has a nice ring to it. It just feels right.

This blog started with a reference to Salina, Kan. It will end with a reference to Salina, Okla., which is Locust Grove’s just-down-the-highway arch-rival.

When Allen resigned, he told me his only regret was he lost to Salina’s boys one time and “that just sticks in my craw.”

That will probably win him a few supporters in the name-the-court campaign.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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