Gopher greats
By Andrew Tellijohn
Leo Lewis (Ph.D. ’97), retired NFL player
Leo Lewis never played sports at the University of Minnesota. While he was attending classes in the School of Kinesiology, he was in the middle of an 11-year career as a wide receiver and punt returner in the National Football League.
Though Lewis had a long career in the NFL, he never took his future for granted. He didn’t get drafted out of college and, at 5-foot-7, was undersized by pro standards. So he spent his off-seasons supplementing his education.
He spent a decade at Minnesota pursuing his Ph.D., writing his dissertation on the post-playing careers of NFL players.
He’s been putting that research to work since rejoining the University in 2006 as associate athletics director for student athlete development. He prepares students for the ups and downs of a career as a professional athlete, as well as the reality that at some point they will need to find something else to do. While Lewis played in the NFL for over a decade, he was cut four times before making the Vikings roster, so when he speaks of preparing for life outside athletics he can do so with authority.
“I think the NFL and other sports leagues are now having more hands-off approaches to managing their players in that way and are relieving their duties to look at how they can best serve their athletes,” he says. “Consequently, at the college level, I think it’s increased.”
Lewis is helping the University create programming that addresses the overall development of student athletes. He’s been given the flexibility to develop and tailor the program to fit the needs of his students. “That was one of the attractions for getting the job here, in that the movement toward a more holistic resource for student athletes has improved.”
He’s also enjoying working with sports besides football and, as the father of two daughters, he’s motivated by helping young women prepare for their lives inside and outside of athletics.
“I think I’m a good role model for that,” he says. “[I’m] someone who wasn’t gifted athletically nor academically, but because I had good mentors, had people who steered me in the right direction, had parents who provided the means for me to get a good education, and at the same time had coaches who believed in me and put me in the right positions to excel. … Because of that I’m able to understand what these student athletes are going through.”
Now in his second stint at the University, many of his past mentors from the School of Kinesiology are now colleagues, including Director Mary Jo Kane, who also directs the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport, and associate professor Diane Wiese-Bjornstal. He hopes to have the same impact on current and future athletes.
“It all points back to the student athlete and how we can serve the student athlete and provide that student athlete as many resources for them while they are here to be successful,” Lewis says.
Linda Wells, (M.A., ’82),
gopher women’s basketball,
volleyball, and softball coach
When Linda Wells arrived at the University in 1973, she was just looking to pursue her master’s degree. Within a decade, she had helped put women’s sports on the map at the University and became one of the early and most influential figures in women’s intercollegiate sports.
Wells had played five sports while earning her bachelor’s degree from Southeast Missouri State. She spent a year student teaching but knew it wasn’t the career she wanted. So she enrolled in the master’s program at the University of Minnesota, where she was drawn by the liberal, progressive culture. The master’s program itself was excellent, Wells says, with many fantastic scholars who helped shape her career.
Perhaps more importantly to her future, Wells quickly got into coaching as well. As the first full-time women’s coach at Minnesota, she headed the basketball (1973–77), volleyball (1974–81), and softball (1974–88) teams simultaneously as they became sponsored sports. For a couple of years, she also held a graduate assistantship and worked in an exercise physiology laboratory, all while taking classes. Wells also played softball professionally from 1975 to 1979.
She still recounts the early days of women’s athletics fondly and enthusiastically. “It was the day of the feminist,” she says. “It was an exciting time to be in women’s athletics.”
She received her master’s in exercise physiology in 1982 and coached at the University until leaving in 1989 to take over the softball program at Arizona State.
The entire package presented her with an education that helped her become a successful coach.
“They developed you to be a professional,” she says. “I’m certainly proud to be a graduate of the College of Education [and Human Development], and I want to stress I couldn’t have done it without the great graduate education and professional development I got from the college.”
She retired from Arizona State in 2005 with an overall coaching record of 884-653 and then coached softball in two Olympic Games, leading the Netherlands team in 2008 and Greece team in 2004. Now completely retired, Wells is making up for lost time, traveling with family, attending sporting events rather than coaching them, and fully enjoying life.
“I’ve been around as a player and a coach. It’s been a great, fun time,” she says. “Coaching was a full-time job. You don’t get to watch your niece or nephew play in a ballgame, or you don’t get to take your sisters out for a birthday, or you don’t get to be there Mother’s Day. Now I can choose wherever I want and do whatever I want and definitely spend a lot of time with my family.”
Clyde Turner, (B.S., ’76, MSW, ’86), Gopher basketball
Work hard, study hard, play hard, excel in life, and beat the odds.
That’s the slogan that Clyde Turner, a self-described former student athlete with some limited learning abilities, adopted to describe his life and inspire others to do the same.
Turner grew up in Champaign, Ill., in a community he says felt like a village. There, he spent hours at the local community center, honing basketball skills that would serve him well.
“It felt like everyone was supportive of each other,” he says. “It felt like you had more than one mom and more than one dad.”
But he also gives credit to his two real parents, who taught him the value of hard work. During one of his summer jobs with the Champaign Recreation and Park Board, he worked with kids who had physical and mental health challenges.
“That was really a great experience, working with that target group and understanding their needs and strengths,” he says. “That really got me thinking that maybe one day I want to work with young folks and families who might be struggling in some areas.”
Turner arrived at the University of Minnesota in 1971, joining the men’s basketball team as a transfer from Robert Morris Junior College. He averaged 18 points per game and was instrumental in helping lead the Gophers to two postseason appearances and their first Big Ten championship in 35 years. But his time on the court was overshadowed by a legendary fight during a game against Ohio State.
Though he was drafted into the NBA, he was quickly cut and headed to Europe to play professional basketball for two seasons. He returned to the University and finished his undergraduate degree in education, later earning his master’s degree in social work as well. His professional and community work in the years since is well documented.
Turner works as manager of the Ramsey County Family Services Division, which oversees child and adult foster care, child care, adoption, and other programs. Nearly three decades ago, as a way to connect in the community, he started the Clyde Turner Educational Basketball Camp. About 35 kids showed up for the first sessions.
In the years since, more than 10,000 from all over the country have attended what he describes as part basketball, part life coaching. He also co-founded Past Athletes Concerned About Education. Turner’s work was rewarded in May at CEHD’s commencement, where he received the Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Award.
Turner stresses that experienced adults should mentor kids. From coaches Al Nuness and Bill Musselman when he was on the basketball team, to local businessman Harvey Mackay as he was transitioning from professional basketball toward his return to the University, Turner remains grateful for help he received. Support from his professors and tutors at the college also proved vital.
His profession has exposed him to some of life’s difficult issues. But he forges ahead with the well-being of his clients in mind and the lessons he’s learned from CEHD, from basketball, and from his parents and hometown.
“You work hard, and you become self sufficient and independent and take care of yourself. And if you have a family you take care of your family and help take care of your neighborhood and your community,” Turner says. “I think that’s part of the reason I do what I do now; I can’t help myself. … I’ve tried to cut back over the years, but I can’t do it. So I think this is the way I’m going to go out.”
David Metzen (B.A., ’64; M.A., ’68; Ph.D. ’72), Gopher hockey
David Metzen didn’t get a lot of playing time his first couple years on the University hockey team. He played behind Lou Nanne, who went on to become a player, coach, and general manager for the Minnesota North Stars.
Though he’s self-effacing about his time on the team, Metzen was good enough to become team captain his senior year.
“I met some great people,” he says. “I played on a couple of U.S. [national] teams. I owe that all to the University.”
He encourages people who attend the University to find their niche, whether it’s a sport, a student group, or another activity. It helps make the large campus smaller and more accessible, he says.
Metzen found one of his niches in the College of Education and Human Development. He arrived as an undergraduate in 1960 with the goal of becoming a teacher and the hockey coach at South St. Paul High School, where he had attended.
He returned for his master’s degree and later for his doctorate in educational administration. He also returned to South St. Paul, though not as the hockey coach.
“At that time I was crushed,” he says of not getting his dream job. “It turned out to be a great thing. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed coaching, but I went back to school and got my administrative license.”
He began working his way up through educational administration in his hometown of South St. Paul, first as an assistant principal, then as a principal, and eventually as superintendent for 18 years.
Though he retired as superintendent in 2000, he has remained active in education. This year Gov. Pawlenty appointed him director of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, where he’s trying to help reshape how high school counselors prepare students for college. It’s vital, he says, because people can lose their houses and their cars, but nobody can ever take away an education.
“That’s why I’m such a stickler,” he says. “It’s not about access. It’s about completion and really hammering on getting kids taking the right courses, and studying, and getting ready for college, and then finishing what they start.”
Though he received his last degree 36 years ago, Metzen returned to the University in 1997 and served 12 years on the Board of Regents.
“If I’ve accomplished anything in this world, I owe it all to the University of Minnesota,” he says. “That’s why I was honored to be on the Board of Regents. It was a way to give back for a place that defined who I am in this world.”
Alicia Hicken-Franklin (B.S.,’97), Gopher swimming
Under the coaching of Alicia Hicken-Franklin, Denver University swimmers have broken more than 75 competitive records, culminating in the 2008-09 season when the Pioneers reached their first conference championships. During the same period, the team has placed in the top 10 for grade point average among Division I swim and dive teams five times.
Hicken-Franklin was quite successful in the water herself. Following in the footsteps of a cousin who competed in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, Hicken-Franklin, a native of Ontario, competed in the Canadian Olympic Trials in 1992. As a Gopher, she was a four-year letter winner and a six-time Big Ten championship finalist in three events.
She attended the University in part because she had connections to then swimming and diving coach Jean Freeman, and because she was impressed that the University had its own Women’s Athletic Department.
“It was a very special thing to me to see that,” she says. “I had never had a female coach. I had never really been in that kind of environment.”
She was similarly impressed by the facilities and the atmosphere. “The people in Minnesota were so friendly and nice, it felt like home to me,” she recalls. “As soon as I got to the campus I felt comfortable.”
Hicken-Franklin majored in kinesiology to understand the physiology behind athletic performance and helped out with a number of club teams at the University. She earned a master’s degree in the physiology of exercise at Washington State. Now she looks forward to helping the Denver swimmers become nationally ranked.
“It was an easy switch to move into coaching—I felt like I had such role models myself as coaches, in my club days and especially at Minnesota,” Hicken-Franklin says. “I really felt inspired by Jean and Terry (Nieszner, then Ganley). I felt if I could have that effect on some young men and women it would be very rewarding.”
While she’s happy in Denver, and credits her employer for its funding and dedication to the swimming program, she gives a lot of credit for her success to her time at the University. She says she met a lot of good mentors and learned a lot about life—and she wouldn’t mind returning as a coach at some point.
“I just feel so lucky to have been given the opportunities I did at Minnesota,” she says. “There’s no way I would be where I am without it. It was really a great starting point for me in my life.”
Thomas Harding (A.A., ’83), Track and field
Thomas Harding, a member of the college’s Alumni Society Board of Directors, entered the former General College as an average student with a decent grade point average but a less than stellar ACT score. In the two decades since he graduated from the University, Harding has gone on to become the successful owner of Plymouth-based Infinity Direct Inc., building the direct marketer into a $17 million company with 33 employees. He’s also remained a lifelong booster of his alma mater.
He says the college was vital to his success because he was able to take a wide variety of classes in small classrooms, rather than getting lost in auditoriums with hundreds of students. He also learned about hard work, improved his critical and logical thinking skills, and gained the confidence to take risks.
“I have a lot of loyalty to it because it gave me, an average student, a chance to excel, where if I had entered the regular system, there’s no way,” he says. “I would have just drowned.”
Harding also competed on the University’s track and field team, running the 100-, 200-, and 400-meter races. “The track and field experience with Roy Griak gave me lifelong discipline,” says Harding, who says the legendary coach helped shape him into the person he is today. “He was tough but very caring.”
He gained a cachet of experience through his first jobs out of college, primarily in sales and marketing. Partially out of stubbornness and partially out of a desire to be his own boss, he pursued his dream of starting his own company, launching Infinity Direct in 1991.
“I have my own visions,” he says. “It’s easier for me to create my own destiny vs. trying to navigate through the corporate world. The only one I can blame for failure is myself.”
As was the case with many General College students, Harding was the first in his immediate family to earn a college degree. He continues providing support for students in similar situations by offering the Harding Family Scholarships to male CEHD students on the track team who are the first in their families to attend college.
Meanwhile, when he isn’t building his business and supporting the college, he keeps his stride, getting out at least twice a week for 10-mile runs. He’s also preparing to launch an athletic apparel company this fall.