Early riser: Oregon WR Devon Allen hurdles to Olympic Trials

EUGENE, Ore. — Affixed to the right door of the black refrigerator in the kitchen of the Allen home in Phoenix is a laminated white sheet of paper.

Louis Allen, father of Devon Allen, put it there after reading a book about the power of goal-setting. Louis Allen is an engineer with some life coach mixed in, and he always has a supply of motivational techniques and tenets at hand.

You can’t pick who you’re competing against or the weather, he will say. Or the family motto, Adversity doesn’t build character, it exposes it.

So one day when his youngest children entered high school, Louis Allen stuck placards on their refrigerator for Devon and his twin sister Carissa. Under the header “Devon’s goals,” there were three columns: Short Term, This Year, Next Five Years.

College football players are hurdling over to the track

All three would sit down every year around the Christmas holidays and write down new goals. “It had to do with being able to focus on details, and just refocus your life,” Louis Allen said. “I’m a firm believer in If you focus on goals, you can accomplish them.”

Devon’s chart is stained with red smudges where one goal after another has been reached and wiped away. Only one remains.

“I actually gave him a picture of it about three or four months ago,” Louis Allen said. “Just to remind him, put that goal in front of him.”

***

On Friday Devon Allen will be at Hayward Field, where he trains for the University of Oregon men’s track and field team and where last month he won his second NCAA championship in the 110 meter hurdles, for his first race in his first U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. It is less than 2 miles from where he trains and plays college football.

Allen, a wide receiver, plans to return to the football team by late August but ideally not sooner. “His No. 1 goal right now is to go the Olympics,” said Matt Lubick, Oregon’s offensive coordinator and Allen’s position coach. “Whenever we can get him back, we’ll be jacked, but it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

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Allen has the fifth-best time of any U.S. man in the 110m outdoor hurdles in 2016, his first outdoor season since tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee at the start of the Rose Bowl in 2015.

He had effectively announced his arrival on the senior scene with a U.S. championship the previous summer, when he won the 110 hurdles at the USATF outdoors in a wind-aided 13.16 seconds. And he had done so at the early age of 19; the second- and third-place finishers were more than a decade older than him.

“He's very mature for being 21 years old, I think,” said Mark Helfrich, Oregon’s football coach. “If you look at the age of the other competitors in the hurdles and certainly the guys he'll be going against, they're 30 years old and much more experienced guys, but he is one of those, whatever that phrase is, wise beyond your years type of guys.”

Allen said, “The hurdling demographic seems to be getting a little bit older, like the really elite guys.” And he’s right. The U.S. hurdler with the best time this year, David Oliver, is 34. Aries Merritt, the reigning Olympic champ and world recordholder, is 30, as is Jason Richardson. Ryan Wilson, the U.S. champion in 2013, is 35. The man with the second-best time this year, Ronnie Ash, is 28, and Jarrett Eaton, who has the fourth-fastest, is 27.

But Allen has been precocious in his speed and agility his whole life, starting with the fact he was walking at seven months.

***

When Allen was 4 years old and the family was living in an apartment near Seattle, some kids in the neighborhood a few years older asked his father if Devon could play football with them. Louis Allen was skeptical. “I don’t want you guys hurting my son,” he told them.

Allen remembers them replying, “Mr. Allen, Devon’s pretty good. He’ll be OK.”

Devon left, and his dad snuck out and looked up the pathway to the small grassy field where the kids were playing. “I watched him move around, I watched him get the ball,” Louis Allen said. “He was really very athletic and very coordinated at that age. I was like, ‘Wow! Maybe we have something here.’ “

A month later Louis Allen was persuaded to sign up his son for a 5-year-old team. Devon lined up at running back and the first time he touched the ball he scooped up a fumble by the quarterback and ran for a 60-yard touchdown. “That's when I knew this kid’s got special speed,” Louis Allen said. “He just would put in another gear, and would just run away from people.”

Devon remembers excelling on field day in elementary school and setting school records in the 100 meters, but it wasn’t until he was 11 years old and living in the Phoenix area that he got an inkling that his future might be on the track. He had just circles the bases during a kickball game at the Boys and Girls Club when one of the counselors came up to him and said, “You’re pretty fast. You should run track.”

Her name was Judith Onyepunuka. She and her sister Jessica were about to become sprinters for USC at the time. Their father Sabestine was the coach of the Arizona Rising Suns track club. From that November through his high school graduation from Brophy Prep, Allen was a part of the club, competing nationally against the best youth track athletes and some who — like Allen — also starred in football, players like former Florida State defensive back Ronald Darby and current Alabama defensive backs Marlon Humphrey and Tony Brown.

Allen had just arrived at Oregon when Lubick, his position coach, became the next person to marvel at his speed and stride. The Ducks were holding an 8:30 a.m. practice, and Allen and the other freshman wide receivers showed up 15 minutes early. But on that day Lubick had planned a pre-practice meeting, so in his mind they were 15 minutes late. That meant that they would have to stay after practice and join Lubick in one of his favorite rituals, something he calls four 400s.

Lubick and Allen would run goal line to goal line four times. That’s one set. Three more sets and you have your four 400s.

Lubick, who looks like an elite distance runner, had never been beaten in the workout. Until that morning. “I ran him off the turf,” Allen said. “It wasn’t even close.”

Lubick said, “I’ve never been beaten in all four. Devon Allen toyed with me. He crushed me. He didn’t break a sweat.

“He’s such a fluid athlete, that when he’s running, it doesn’t look like he’s straining. He just accelerates.”

***

Even though the workout sometimes is used as punishment, Allen has come to like it. He usually completes a set in 55 seconds. Lubick is in the 60, 65-second range.

But the last time Allen ran it, he didn’t finish. He was 3½ months removed from his knee surgery and had been cleared to resume running about two weeks earlier. He was trying to get back in shape, so he joined Lubick at the goal line. He was ahead, but after three sets, he had to stop. “It’s a weird feeling,” Allen said. “Your body thinks it’s the same, but by the third rep my leg was cramping up. I said, ‘I’m done.’ ”

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Allen says he has occasional iliotibial (IT) band issues in his left knee, so he works to combat tightness by stretching, using a roller at home and seeing an acupuncturist.

“People always ask me, are you back to 100%?” he said. “I'm like, well, you can say that, but my knee doesn't feel the same as it did two years ago. It feels good, but I don't feel exactly the same.

“My strength's good. That's going to come into play in the 110 hurdles. I think I am definitely the fastest I've been.”

But this is another area where his two-sport status may be to his benefit.

The ability to prevent pain from interfering with performance is another area Allen’s two-sport status is to his benefit. As he said, “Football is one of those things that nobody is really 100%.”

Louis Allen remembers a parent telling him during his son’s freshman year at Brophy Prep, “Dev is going to have to make a choice.”

Louis Allen said, “I understand you want him to be successful, but the reality of it is, why does he have to make a choice? Until he has to make a choice, I'm going to support him doing both sports.”

Unlike other schools that recruited Allen, such as Texas, Oregon hasn’t forced Allen to make a choice, and it won’t. The topic was addressed during his recruitment, and no one’s position has changed — not Allen’s, not Helfrich’s, not track and field coach Robert Johnson’s.

Johnson, who along with Helfrich credits the teams’ shared strength and conditioning coach Jim Radcliffe for the collaboration’s success, said, “They require a lot, we require a lot. So being able to find that balance to put Devon in the best position to be successful, that’s a unique conundrum in itself because we as coaches — football coaches, basketball coaches, track coaches, golf coaches, no matter what it is — are greedy. We all want more. And so that’s no different between Coach Helfrich and myself.

“(Devon) does a good job in handling both.”

Helfrich said, “A lot of times when people talk about two-sport athletes or potential two-sport situations, something gives, something is sacrificed. It's been a great give and take for both of us. This last push to the Trials has been awesome.”

With the competition that will step to starting line with him, the Trials will be a huge challenge. They also are the conduit to the final remaining goal on the refrigerator back home in Phoenix.

It was added when Allen sat down to write his goals around Christmas 2012, during his senior year of high school. Allen crossed out the word “Five” in “Next Five Years” and replaced it with “Four.” Then he wrote below it, “Olympic Games!”