* On the way to the 100th EIWA Championship  www.pennathletics.com/2004eiwas     Robert George Allman was a great wrestler, good student and gracious man. He was born in July 1918 in Atlantic City. At the age of four, the adventurous youth decided to climb to the top of an abandon freight car with other boys in the neighborhood. Allman jumped off the boxcar when dared by a playmate and landed on his head. It was the last day he saw the sun shine, for the accident left him completely blind, which he remained for the rest of his life, although his handicap did not stop him from living it to the fullest.     He attended the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia for 11 years. While at Overbrook, Allman participated in wrestling and invented a game called 'ground ball' which was the sport of baseball for the blind. Allman excelled as an interscholastic wrestler. He also gained a reputation of being the fastest braille reader in the school.     Allman had his own philosophy on life and stuck to it. He focused on the things he could do instead of the things he could not. "Soon I had the confidence I needed," Allman told the Philadelphia Inquirer during an  interview in 1940. "I made up my mind that I was going to do everything any one else could do, but see and maybe do it better."     He went to Frankford High for his senior year before attending the University of Pennsylvania. There was some considerable debate during his freshman year at Penn about allowing Allman to compete in intercollegiate wrestling, but authorities had no standards to go by. Allman was permitted to wrestle because of his great skill and knowledge of the sport. He was the first blind man to win a varsity letter in any collegiate sport in the country and the first sightless man to wrestle at the varsity level.    He went on to finish second at the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships for three-straight years. He concluded his varsity campaign with 44 wins and 12 losses. Allman provided an incomparable kind of leadership to his team as the 1939 wrestling captain because just his presence on the mat brought the Quakers to emotional peaks. He was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame and the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Hall of Fame in April 1996.    In a dual meet against Harvard, Allman wrestled Crimson captain Harvey Rose. In less than a minute Rose had Allman on the mat almost beat. Allman lodged his arms and knees with his rival above him, turned swiftly in a final desperate effort. It was his famous roll and with a will to triumph that Allman pinned Rose with a bar arm and chancery hold to change defeat into victory.    When Allman took to the mat his opponent usually agreed to start with their elbows connected and held by the referee, but sometimes his opponents refused. Such was the case against a Syracuse wrestler. Allman had to determine where is opponent was by his breathing. The task did not phase him though as Allman pinned his opponent in 20 seconds.     "Wrestling has changed me from a timid, backward individual to one possessing self-confidence and aggressiveness," Allman said. "Because wrestling is one of the few sports open to the blind, I believed it would be an excellent form of athletic competition. Not only did the sport develop me physically, but also it developed my personality."     In February 1939 Allman wrote a personal story answering the most frequently asked question 'How do I wrestle'. "To me the most important task is keeping in contact with my opponent," he said. "It is necessary to hold onto my man as much as possible, because I am at a slight disadvantage when he slips away. When we go to the mat we are absolutely even. Although the last statement may be hard to believe, you can understand it when you realize a good wrestler must depend on sense of direction, change of pace and good  balance. Lack of vision will not handicap a man possessing these three qualities."      W. Austin Bishop was the head wrestling coach at Penn during Allman's years. Bishop's approach to teaching Allman was to have him feel his demonstration of a hold with another member of the team. He would emphasize the position of his arms, weight distribution and proper spread of legs. Coach Bishop would then try the hold on Allman so he could learn its effectiveness on future opponents. The final step in the learning process was for Allman to try the position on a member of the Penn wrestling team, while Austin critiqued all aspects of the application.     Allman graduated from the College with honors in 1939. Along the way he picked up several awards and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, the honorary scholastic fraternity, for his academic excellence. He received the Most Outstanding Athlete award and the Class of 1915 award, as the member of the senior class who most clearly approaches the ideal University of Pennsylvania athlete. He was awarded the Spade Award, given to the man who ranks fourth among the senior class and was the first blind undergraduate to  be elected member of the Sphinx society.     The following year, Allman was honored by the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association as "the Most Courageous Athlete in America." He was the first wrestler to win the award and took the honors over Lou Gehrig and Monte Stratton. In accepting the award he thanked all of his coaches and acknowledged his brother George as his inspiration. Among his remarks at the Sports Writers banquet on Jan. 30, 1940: "This coveted award is most highly prized and will always be the most cherish trophy of my career. I have done  nothing more than the average American boy. Courage is nothing more than doing the best you can in the good old American Way."     Allman continued his education at Penn and graduated with a Law degree in 1942. That same year he passed the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania bars and was permitted to practice in the area. He specialized in adoption law.    Allman's athletic career did not end with his last silver medal at the EIWA tournament. He continued to be active with wrestling as a member of the Penn grapplers club and took up the sport of golf. In 1948 he organized the Middle Atlantic Blind Golf Association. He went on to become president of the United States Blind Golfers' Association. From 1947 to 1951 he had his own sports show on Philadelphia radio station KYW. His show every Saturday evening highlighted sporting events from the previous week. Allman also  interviewed athletes on his show and talked with his special guests about the ongoings in the sporting world.    In 1970 he was active in bringing wrestling into Philadelphia public schools. According to the National Urban Wrestling Development committee there was not a single wrestling mat in the entire Philadelphia school system in 1970, eight years later over 1,200 boys were grappling in 14 public schools, eight Catholic high schools and on eight junior varsity high school squads.     He turned his efforts to politics later in life and ran for the Congress as the primary Democratic candidate for the sixth district in Pennsylvania on three separate occasions and served as committeeman for the 34th district.      Bob and his wife, Licia, had four sons, Robert, Vincent, Richard and Lee. Lee graduated from Penn in 1988 and wrestled for four years, serving as captain as a senior.      Allman lived a very full and content life until his death in May 1994. His zestfulness for life and passion for the sport of wrestling serves as an inspiration for all student-athletes. In 1939 Allman wrote, "Throughout my college career, Coach Austin Bishop has been not only my advisor but my ideal as a true man and builder of men. Without him I would not have been even an ordinary wrestler. And wrestling is my proudest achievement."