Tori Allen hopes to combine fashion design w/ Olympic quest

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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a ... /804220371

Tori Allen hopes to combine fashion design with Olympic quest

By Steve Ballard
Posted: April 22, 2008
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Just because she is in training for a career in fashion design doesn't mean Tori Allen is ready to shed her daredevil ways for a relatively quiet life seated at a sewing machine.
The girl who in 2002 took the Indiana High School Athletic Association to court and won is the only rock-climbing, pole-vaulting Title IX activist in her fashion classes at Florida State University, which the 2005 Lawrence Central graduate is attending on a partial track and field scholarship.


Her dream is to land a design job at Nike, partly because a move to its home base in Portland, Ore., would enable her to take up kite surfing. Or mountain climbing. And if pole vaulting doesn't get her to the Olympics, which has been a goal for as long as she can remember, she already has alternatives in mind.
"I've always wanted to try luge. Or skeleton, you know, where they go down headfirst," Allen, 19, said in a recent phone interview. "Maybe someday rock climbing will be in the Olympics. If not, maybe I'll get there in a whole different sport. I'd like that."
Allen, a junior at FSU, gained national renown as a champion rock climber in her early teens and even had her own line of merchandise, including an action figure. She made more headlines when she and her father, Steve, filed a lawsuit against the IHSAA that led to girls pole vaulting being added as a sanctioned event across the state.
"It was very inspiring to see her out front and being a leader for other girls," said Tori's mother, Shawntel Allen. "It was one of those moments you don't get very often as a parent."
Such commitment and wide-ranging interests and talents, which in 2003 included authoring a motivational book entitled "Life Rocks," made her an attractive recruit for FSU. But it probably also has kept her from reaching her potential as a pole vaulter. Her collegiate best is 12 feet, 6 inches, only 8 inches above her high school best, and 4 feet off the world record.
"The defining characteristic I see in Tori is her energy. She is constantly on the go and constantly looking to be involved," said Dennis Nobles, the vaulting coach at FSU. "For anyone, college is an adjustment, especially when they start getting deeper into their field of study. But I think with Tori, her energy is detracting from her athletic career right now."
Nobles has set 13 feet as an immediate goal for Allen and said 14 feet is not out of reach before she graduates. Her competitiveness never has been an issue.
"When she picks up a pole, she wants to win," he said. "She was so very successful as a 13-, 14-year-old kid -- I mean, not every 13-year-old has written a book. She handled that and is making the transition from child athlete to adulthood very well."
Allen's transition to college was made more difficult when her parents divorced shortly before she left for Tallahassee.
Her once close-knit family, which spent four years in Africa on a Christian mission between her fourth and eighth birthdays, is now spread out; her father is the only family member still in Indianapolis. He continues to manage Climb Time, an indoor rock climbing facility on the Northeastside.
"I bought it for the kids, and now I'm the only one still here," he said. "I had the empty-nest syndrome for a while, but that's what kids do -- grow up and move on."
Allen's mother has moved to suburban Atlanta and is an elementary school teacher. Younger brother Clark is attending the Indiana Academy, a resident high school for gifted students in Muncie.
Mother and daughter are enjoying being just three hours apart. Tori's relationship with her father was strained when he remarried shortly after the divorce, but they have reconciled and he is planning his first campus visit this spring.
Tori has spent the past two summers working as a nanny in Colorado. This year, she plans to get a waitressing job and stay in Tallahassee to attend summer school.
One thing she won't be doing is returning to her hometown, which she hasn't visited since coming home two years ago to have her tonsils removed. It's not a favorite memory but a revealing one.
"I realized," she said, "I'd rather be in Florida in pain than in Indiana in pain."