Tuesday, September 15, 2009
STICKING WITH SIS
River Valley Football
Nick Dettmann
Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
THREE OAKS, Mich. – No, it couldn’t be.
It would be just too perfect.
River Valley senior Tyler Allen scooped up a Lake Michigan Catholic fumble at about the 50 yard line and headed for the end zone.
Ten months, or 303 days, since the passing of his 18-year-old sister, Nikki, in a car accident, Allen was nearing a touchdown in his first game since losing his older sister, wearing the same jersey number she used to wear on the Mustangs’ softball team – No. 21.
All that was on his mind was the Mustangs’ sideline and bleachers going wild.
“I was getting chills from the crowd,” Tyler Allen said.
He came up short of the end zone. He got to the 7-yard line. Bummed he didn’t score the touchdown?
“I was happy I got that far,” he said. “It gave us good field position.”
It would’ve been nice, though.
Had he reached the end zone, he would’ve pounded on his chest over his heart, looked up and pointed to the sky, and say, ‘that one was for you, sis.’
Nikki Allen died Oct. 29, just four months after her graduation from River Valley. She was played softball, and ran cross country and track.
She was following a tractor trailer going east on U.S. 12 near Buchanan, Mich., when another driver, traveling west on U.S. 12 was attempting to turn left onto Dayton Road and struck Allen’s car on her driver’s-side door.
She died on the way to the hospital.
She was a freshman at Southwestern Michigan College in Niles, Mich., studying to be an archeologist, and was driving to visit friends for a study session.
Tyler Allen, a junior then, was at school when the news came.
“Just wow,” he said of his initial reaction. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
Mustangs football coach Jeff Degner, also a teacher at the school, remembers the school being “locked down.” Administrators, Degner recalls, told the students to hold the students in their classrooms so they could go from classroom to classroom to tell everybody the news.
“It was a shock to everybody because she was so popular,” Degner said.
Degner remembers his only conversation with her: It was about football and Tyler.
“She wanted to see him succeed at the varsity level,” Degner recalled.
Nikki Allen was the oldest of four siblings – Tyler, Jessica (13) and Alex (12). She was also a good athlete. She qualified for the state finals once in cross country and twice in the 3,200-meter relay in track.
A memorial 5K run/walk will be held in her honor Saturday, Oct. 10, at River Valley High School.
Called, “Nikki’s Shortcut,” the event aims to raise money to benefit St. Jude’s and Smile Train, and to provide scholarships in Allen’s honor. The event begins at 9:30 a.m. (CDT). It costs $21 – like her jersey number.
“She just loved running so we thought it would be a nice way to remember her by,” Tyler said.
Allen admits it is still hard to go about his day and not think about his sister.
They often gave each other a hard time; teasing one another. They also shared some laughs.
One time, when Tyler was about 15 years old, the family went to Northern Michigan for a trip.
They went on a canoe trip, and Tyler and Nikki shared a canoe.
“We really sucked at it,” Tyler recalls. “Like every 20 feet, we were hitting the other side of the river, and we eventually tipped.
“It was funny.”
When they tipped, their sandals fell off and went down stream. They caught up to them, and they just laughed.
“It was a nice bonding between us two,” Allen said.
To help get him through the times, Allen’s teammates have been there for support.
As a memorial this season, each player for the Mustangs wears a black sticker decal on the back of their helmets with No. 21 in white numbers. Allen’s has both that sticker and the helmet sticker indicating it’s his helmet, also No. 21.
The thing was Allen was always a lineman, and wearing No. 21 was not allowed by rule. So to make him able to wear that number, he was moved to tight end.
“He’s not your typical No. 21,” Degner joked. “He’s more like a 78. He worked hard and earned a spot at tight end.”
Josh Hawkins said his then-fellow junior teammates wanted to do something to honor Nikki, and help Tyler. They just didn’t know the best way to do it. So the team approached Degner about it and he recommended the sticker decal.
“As a team, they knew they had to rally around Tyler and they did,” Degner said. “It’s a neat thing. … They want to play hard in her memory.”
When the Mustangs took the field against Lake Michigan Catholic on Aug. 28, the decals were on every player’s helmet.
“He’s part of the team, and it hurt all of us,” Hawkins said. “We wanted to do something.”
Outside of football, Allen has used short-storytelling as a way to grieve with his pain. It has helped tremendously for him, someone who is soft-spoken.
He’s written a variation of stories: comedies, thrillers and etc. No real theme with them; just whatever comes to him. He’s written about five of them.
One he wrote was 50 pages long about a sorority of thieves who would steal pointless things, like a telephone. He says he would like to get some of his work published some day.
Allen reads a lot, but his father, Brad, is the one who helped Tyler get going with the hobby as a way to cope.
“It’s easier to talk on paper than out-loud,” Tyler said.
With her sadly gone, Allen is now the older sibling and looked upon as the role model, like Nikki was to him. However, he insists that title still belongs to his late sister.
He even still sees her from time-to-time.
Whenever he hears someone talk like her or make a facial expression like she once did, he is quickly reminded of her. She is never far from his heart.
She’s on his football jersey; on his helmet.
Contact sports writer Nick Dettmann at ndettmann@thenewsdispatch.com or 874-7211, Ext. 447.
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