FootballSaturday, October 1, 2016
4

Sitting in the stands just before

Michigan kicked off its 2015 season
and ushered in the Jim Harbaugh
era, Joe Allen was frantically trying
to get a hold of his wife.

He was in Utah for the beginning

of his son’s redshirt junior season,
and he could tell from the way
Kenny was warming up that he
would be starting for the first time.
Joe’s phone had just broken that
morning, so there was no way to
warn his wife Stacey — who had to
stay home in Michigan for work —
that it would be the biggest game yet
of Kenny’s career.

Allen’s hometown of Fenton, and

its 12,000 inhabitants, is just 40
miles north of Ann Arbor. That night,
Stacey and about 40 family friends
packed a Buffalo Wild Wings there,
convincing the restaurant to put the
game on every single screen.

It had been a long journey already

for the 21-year-old, and if Kenny saw

the field, they weren’t going to miss
any angle of it.

It had been a long four years since

Allen committed to Michigan as a
preferred walk-on, and now he was
about to take the field to open the
game in Salt Lake City. Though she
couldn’t read names or numbers on
the distant screens, Stacey knew
her son when she saw him. As soon
as the camera zoomed in enough for
everyone else to see “Allen” on the
back of his jersey, the Buffalo Wild
Wings exploded in cheers.

At the very least, Kenny would

be doing kickoffs. It may not seem
like a lot, even to the most serious of
college football fans, but that night in
Fenton, he was the hometown hero.

When he lined up to kick a 29-yard

field goal in the second quarter, his
mom and grandma started crying.

It was the culmination of years of

hard work, from practicing on snow-
covered fields to travelling to camps

to work on his craft, all the while
receiving an endless supply of family
support.

“If you told me five years ago I was

going to be kicking field goals at U
of M, I would’ve thought you were
crazy,” Kenny said.

In order to be successful as a

kicker, everything else needed to fall
into place perfectly. The kicker role is
unlike any other in football, the most
visible pass-or-fail position by far. In
order to climb from youth club soccer
to high school varsity football to
walking on to a Division I team and
earning a scholarship, Kenny Allen
had to put the pieces together.

***

Over a year later, Stacey and

Joe are preparing for their fourth
straight home game of the season.
It’s 10 a.m. on a 60-degree fall day,
and they’re set up with the other

Michigan moms and dads, each
one bringing the full spread of
sandwiches and chips and wings
that define a tailgate. It’s an idyllic
day, perfectly designed for football,
and the parents of the players are the
happiest people outside of Michigan
Stadium. They’re the lucky ones in
a crowd of 110,000 who can actually
point out their kid on the sidelines.

Most of the parents bring a crew

of family and friends with them, and
the Allens are no different. Kenny’s
older brother, Jimmy, will join them
shortly, and before the game starts,
so will his 80-year-old grandparents.

This is the family’s fifth year of

tailgating, but this season has been
a little different. It could be Kenny’s
last year of football, and he’s started
each game this season. So far, he’s
carried the load of all three kicking
duties: field goals, punts and kickoffs.

As a freshman, Kenny was a

preferred walk-on who specialized
in punting. Despite being both the
placekicker and the punter in high
school, punting is what he excelled
at, earning a scholarship to Oregon
State. At 6-foot-4, he had the long
and lean build for it.

Despite the allure

of
a
scholarship,

when
Michigan

came knocking with
promises of suiting
up in maize and
blue, it was hard to
consider anywhere
else, especially since
Stacey earned two
degrees
from
the

University.
After

seeing the Big House
in action for the first time during the
Wolverines’ 2011 “Under the Lights”
matchup with Notre Dame during his
senior year visit, it was a done deal.

With the proximity of Fenton to

Ann Arbor, Allen always has a big
crowd of family at games, regardless
of his starting status. That’s the
advantage of being a local kid at a Big
Ten school. Faced with the option to
move out to Oregon on scholarship,
Allen
decided
that
his
family

outweighed free tuition.

“They’re very supportive,” Allen

said. “My parents, my grandparents,
my brother and sister, they’re at
every game, always here, tailgating.
… It’s meant everything because, you

know, if there’s a bad day, I know they
believe in me, even if I sometimes
don’t believe in myself. There’s
always someone I can fall back on,
someone I can talk to, knowing that
they’re always there.

“I guess my family, their support

and love, was the reason I was able to
do everything I was able to do. Being
a kicker is not that cool, especially
in high school. But they never said
that, they just told me to do my best. I
think if it wasn’t for them, I definitely
wouldn’t have stuck with it.”

One of Allen’s longtime kicking

coaches, Chris Sailer, explained it
like this: “I remember his father
being at every single camp. I
remember him asking questions at
every camp, as far as both of his boys’
development and what he could do
to help them be better kickers, first
of all, and then also, get to the next
level. It was supportive in the right
way; it was never overbearing or
over-demanding. … I think having
that support behind a young athlete
is huge.”

On top of working with his dad,

Kenny competes with his brother.

Jimmy Allen, who
is two years Kenny’s
senior, was the first
one in the family
to
start
kicking.

Kenny grew up with
a love for soccer,
something
that

seemed
inevitable

considering
his

dad
played
the

sport collegiately at
Oakland University.

That love evolved

into kicking footballs. Jimmy still
kicks too, playing in the Indoor
Football
League
for
the
Iowa

Barnstormers and holding his own
kicking camps. According to Stacey,
their relationship is “very loving, but
highly competitive” and always has
been.

***

As long as it was a clear day, Kenny

and Jimmy would go outside to
practice kicking. In the winter, that
meant bringing a shovel along with
their football equipment in order to
clear off a patch on the 30-yard line.
Sure, they’d lose a few balls in the

SAM MOUSIGIAN/Daily

Fifth-year senior Kenny Allen was once an unknown walk-on from Fenton, Mich., but he has earned Michigan’s starting kicking job.

Kelly Hall, Daily Sports Editor

“There’s always
someone I can

fall back on,

someone I can

talk to.”