World's Top Bowler Still Sold on Alma Mater

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Three Nebraska national championship teams celebrated important anniversaries Saturday, returning to Lincoln for the ultimate in recognition – an acknowledgement of their excellence decades ago and a re-introduction to their alma mater in front of an ongoing NCAA Memorial Stadium record sellout crowd. Nebraska’s 1984 women’s indoor track and field team was recognized for its NCAA championship 30 years ago. The Huskers 1994 men’s gymnastics program was honored for its NCAA championship 20 years ago, and NU’s 2004 women’s bowling team was recognized for its national championship 10 years ago.  The reunions were all part of Nebraska’s first-ever Weekend of Champions, which also included the Huskers’ 1984 College World Series women’s softball team and NU’s 1984 wrestling team, which finished fourth nationally.

“Our goal is to honor the past to help inspire the present as well as the future,” Nebraska Associate Athletic Director Keith Zimmer said. “When we reorganized the N-Club last year, our past letterwinners were excited that our new letterwinners wanted to connect with past accomplishments and understand why they, too, came to Nebraska to create a culture for others to follow.” For instance, Shannon Pluhowsky, an All-American who led the Huskers to the NCAA Bowling Championship 10 years ago, recently was ranked the No. 1 women’s bowler in the world. The Phoenix, Ariz., native remains a Big Red loyalist every time she gets the chance. “Anytime someone asks me where I went to school, I’m proud to say Nebraska,” she said. “I follow that by telling them that Nebraska ranks at the very top of any list you want to put together because when you come to Lincoln, you learn a lot and keep getting better and better as an all-around person. Then I tell them that’s why there’s no place like Nebraska.”

Pluhowsky is district manager for entertainment/bowling centers in Dayton, Fairfield, Coumbus and Cleveland, Ohio, and her No. 1 world ranking comes at a relevant time. “They’ve decided to start the Women’s Professional Bowlers Association again, so it’s exciting to see it coming back,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to being part of it again.” Bill Straub, a longtime professional bowler, is still the coach of Nebraska’s nationally prominent program. He remembers when Pluhowsky and her parents visited Nebraska on a recruiting trip. “Shannon had won the Junior Nationals both as a junior and a senior in high school,” Straub recalled.  “We brought her in for a visit in the middle of January, and her dad was trying to get some traction on an icy street. I told him then it was never going to get any worse than that day, so if he can get through this, he can get through anything. He said yes, and so did Shannon. We were lucky. We really were. To this day, she’s the world’s top female bowler.”

From left: Former assistant Jim Howard, Richard Grace, Francis Allen.

Allen: Former Husker Grace a Great Coach

Francis Allen, Nebraska’s all-time winningest coach in NCAA competition in any sport, is equally proud of his top gymnast who helped lead the Huskers to the 1994 NCAA championship. “We had four kids from Lincoln and Omaha and one from Kearney on that team, so five of our eight gymnasts were from the state of Nebraska,” Allen said Saturday. “Richard Grace was our ace. He was a three-time NCAA champion – in floor, parallel bars and all-around.  Now he’s a club gymnastics coach in Lincoln, and let me tell you, that kid can coach what he learned competing here. He knows what it’s all about. He’s great.”

Pepin’s All-Time No. 1 Recruit: Merlene Ottey

True to his style as one of the top collegiate coaches in track and field history, Gary Pepin favored his former student-athletes waving to Saturday’s crowd. Absent was perhaps the greatest individual recruit in any sport in the history of Nebraska Athletics. “Merlene Ottey (above) was the epitome of speed, whether it was 55 meters, 100, 200 or the 400,” said Terry Beek, who was a Nebraska Sports Information Director for both the ’84 women’s NCAA champion track and field team and the ’84 softball team that was honored Saturday.

1984 National Champions Get a Warm Reception

“I was hoping Merlene could come to this event because she’s in a league of her own,” Beek said.  An ageless wonder, Ottey was still competing internationally in her mid-50s. She won a total of 29 Olympic and world championship medals, including three silver and six bronze medals in the Olympic Games.  In combined world outdoor and indoor championships, she won six gold, six silver and eight bronze medals. She was not, however, a one-woman show for Nebraska’s ’84 national championship team. “Rhonda Blanford Green was a great hurdler on that team and now she heads up the NSAA (Nebraska Schools Activities Association),” Beek pointed out. “Deb Powell was another great athlete on that national championship team. She also started on our women’s basketball team and was a proven leader in everything she did. She even became the first female mayor in the history of East St. Louis, where she grew up.” … more proof, perhaps, that Nebraska’s culture of daily improvement in all aspects of academics and athletics prepares student-athletes well for the biggest game of all – life.

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