Well deserved for this young man being named the 2023-2024 Record Eagle Male Athlete of the Year.
MAPLE CITY — Benji Allen kind of hates attention.
That’s too bad, because he’s earning a lot of it after putting together a spectacular sports season for the Glen Lake Lakers in 2023-24.
“I just hate that feeling of being front and center,” the Glen Lake junior said. “I’d rather blend in with my friends and be a needle in the haystack.”
Good luck with that.
Allen is rightfully the center of attention as the 2023-24 Record-Eagle High School Male Athlete of the Year for a four-sport season in which he excelled at each. He made the Dream Team in all four sports — football, boys basketball, baseball and track.
“The kid can’t sit down,” Glen Lake baseball coach Kris Herman said. “The motor is always running.”
Allen runs track to get faster and stay in shape, and he ended up qualifying for the state finals in four events — the 200-meter dash and the 400-, 800- and 1,600-meter relays — although he couldn’t participate in that because the baseball team’s regionals were the same day.
At the same time, he played baseball, setting a school record with two perfect games in one season and putting up top-10 single-season performances in batting average (.516), complete-game shutouts (five), strikeouts (121), slugging percentage (.720), batting average with runners in scoring position (.640), OPS (1.336) and hit by pitch (17).
He played quarterback for the playoff-bound Laker football team, rushing for a half dozen touchdowns and throwing for three more. Allen led the Laker defense with 114 tackles, nine sacks and two forced fumbles.
In basketball, he averaged 10.6 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.1 steals a game as the Lakers made the Division 4 state quarterfinals.
He earned all-conference honors in all four sports.
Playing four sports makes sure there’s no offseason. That’s something he enjoys because there’s no time to overthink how the last season ended before the next one begins.
“He’s always doing something,” said Lakers boys basketball and track coach Jason Bradford, who noted Allen played all five positions in basketball this season. “I don’t know that he takes a day off.”
That’s pretty rare.
During the summer, Allen works six days a week at Glen Lake Marine, along with his older brother Brody. Benji sometimes works from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at night during the summer, then gets in some baseball work a half hour after clocking out. His job includes some work in the spring and fall while he’s also going to school and playing sports.
“It’s not too busy,” Allen said. “At some point, it feels normal. If I have a day off and I’m at home, it feels empty almost. I’d rather be with my teammates or bettering myself.”
Allen started baseball in kindergarten and began playing travel ball in fifth grade. That summer, he played for four baseball teams at the same time — one in Traverse City, one in Empire, an American Legion team and travel ball. At age 10.
It’s not a surprise Benji and Brody picked up great work ethic.
Their parents bought a bison farm in the Upper Peninsula near Iron Mountain three years ago. Glenn Allen mostly lives there for his fourth career, with Shannon Allen commuting between. Both retired from the airline industry and also run a company out of their garage — Nella’s Sogood Coffee.
“He came back a leader last year,” Glen Lake football coach Jesse Smith said. “He wants to be a heart surgeon. He takes AP classes. He doesn’t have an off button, even if you tell him.”
Glenn Allen went through a double bypass when Benji was in kindergarten. Benji said he thinks that is what interested him in becoming a heart surgeon, something he’s thought about since childhood.
Brody is majoring in criminal justice at Grand Valley, giving Benji an up-close view into the GVSU lifestyle. The Lakers are one of many schools recruiting Allen, with the likes of Saginaw Valley and Michigan Tech also vying for the soon-to-be senior.
However, the Allen brothers playing football almost didn’t happen.
“They were involved in so many sports, it wasn’t like they were begging to do it,” Shannon Allen said. “I imagine watching the movie ‘Concussion’ didn’t help.”
That movie stars Will Smith in a true story about a doctor who discovers a neurological deterioration similar to Alzheimer’s disease in former NFL players.
The disorder — called chronic traumatic encephalopathy — causes the death of nerve cells in the brain and gets worse over time. The only way to definitively diagnose CTE is after death during an autopsy of the brain.
Talk of repeated concussions and harmful aftereffects had been swirling since 2009. But even more parents across the country reacted after the movie, and football participation numbers dipped noticeably in the following years. The 2015 film came out when Brody was in middle school.
The Allens were no exception, deciding Brody and Benji wouldn’t play until high school.
A 2023 survey released by the NFHS shows that the 2021-22 school year was the first on record with fewer than a million players nationwide participating in 11-player high school football in America since the turn of the century. The reported total of 976,886 players represented a 12.2 percent decrease from a 2008-09 peak.
More than 350 high schools across the country dropped football since 2017.
Brody went out and bought his own SpeedFlex helmet, one designed with a flexible panel in the front to reduce impacts to the head. That model generally starts at more than $350 apiece and can run upwards of $500.
“Then we knew he was pretty serious about it,” Shannon Allen said.
Brody didn’t play football until his junior year and started at linebacker for the Lakers, playing in the 2019 Division 6 state championship game. He would go on to play at Concordia-Ann Arbor before transferring to Grand Valley for academics.
Later on, it was Brody who convinced his parents to let Benji play football as a freshman.
It didn’t hurt that Benji grew up to be a bit bigger than Brody, who played defensive back at Concordia at 6-foot-1, 185 pounds. As a junior, Benji checks in at 6-3, 210.
Advances in helmet technology, the school’s concussion check policy and the presence of Glen Lake athletic trainer Christiaan Krombeen calmed the Allens’ worries.
In retrospect, they realized letting their sons freestyle ski was more dangerous than the gridiron.
Herman isn’t one to speak in hyperbole, so when he praises a player as much as he does Benji Allen, people take note.
“He’s only the third five-tool player I’ve coached up here,” said Herman, who’s coached the Lakers for 19 years as head coach and six more before that as an assistant.
The two-time all-state baseball player looks to make that a third next spring.
“There’s more he can do,” Herman said. “The nice thing is he recognizes that. It’s not the honors and such, it’s about completely tapping out potential.”
Allen would often tag along with his older brother to Lakers baseball workouts. He began on varsity as a freshman splitting time with Peter Gelsinger behind the plate, manning the same position as his brother.
Herman isn’t a fan of players doubling up as pitcher and catcher, saying it’s too much on a high schooler to catch one game of a doubleheader and pitch in the other.
Then later in the season, Herman noticed a change. Allen’s work ethic and all that was already there.
But suddenly he went from eye-level with Herman to the coach looking up to him in a matter of months.
That’s when Herman decided it was the right time to turn Benji into a pitcher.
“Whatever he wants to do in life, he’s going to be good at it,” Herman said. “He has a work ethic that’s pretty uncommon for kids.”