Francis, Robert “Bob”

 

Robert “Bob” Francis – (1994)

 

One might say the sky was the limit for Bob Francis, one of only two Lorain County athletes to ever clear 7-feet 1-inch, careerwise, in track and field’s high jump event.

Until the great Mark Cannon (7-2 1/4 prep best) came along at Elyria High School in the late 1980’s, Francis of Lorain Catholic High School and Larry Fortner (a fellow LSHOF inductee tonight) of Clearview High School were the premier names associated with county high jump records.

Although Lorain Catholic didn’t have an official track team during its infant years in the early 1970’s, Francis represented the school extremely well as its self-taught, at-large high jumping dynamo.

The agility and uncanny jumping ability of Francis caught the eye of Lorain Catholic basketball coach-athletic director Jim Lawhead when the busy Bob was a springy 6-1 junior forward with the Spartans’ 19-2 cage squad of 1970-71.

During the spring of 1971, Lawhead recruited a “mini-team” from the hallways of Lorain Catholic by asking Francis, Jim Jenkins and Kevin Sofranko to compete as tracksters in the North Central Conference track and field meet at Parma.

Francis, who employed his own version of the backwards-over “Fosbury Flop” jumping style, won the conference high jump crown with a then-NCC record leap of 6-3 1/4. Remarkably, Sofranko and Jenkins also tallied in the NCC meet with high jumps of 5-10, with Jenkins adding additional points to the Spartans’ score by scaling 11 feet, 6 inches in the pole vault event.

Francis, meanwhile, never looked back, just up, during his 1972 senior season at Lorain Catholic.

He broke his own NCC high jump record by leaping 6-4 1/4. He then recorded a jump of 6-6 (best in Ohio then by a Class A athlete) at the Bellaire interstate relays; won the Cuyahoga Heights Sectional title at 6-6 3/4; won the Kent District toga at 6-7; then became Lorain Catholic’s first state champion in any sport by soaring a then-meet record 6-5 in winning the state Class A title at Ohio State Stadium.

Invited to the Ohio Classic all-star meet at Mansfield Malabar Field in June, 1972, Francis capped his fine prep career by recording a then-meet standard of 6-7 1/4, which also was a new record for a Lorain County athlete, a record Fortner would later shatter with a leap of 6-9.

Encouraged by Dr. John Binder of Lorain to accept a track scholarship offer from Kent State University, Francis joined Coach Doug Raymond’s track team and quickly made a shambles of all existing Golden Flash indoor and outdoor high jump standards.

After tying the KSU mark of 6-10 as a freshman, Francis’ sophomore year saw him become the first Golden Flash in history to reach the magical 7-0 pinnacle when he finished third in the 34th Knights of Columbus indoor meet in Cleveland in February, 1974.

In May, 1974, at Kent, Francis won the Mid-American Conference outdoor title with his 6-8 upset triumph over defending MAC high jump champion Chris Adams of Ohio University.

Francis, who began clearing 7-0 on a regular basis during his illustrious senior season at Kent State, sailed to a career-equalling 7-1 in sweeping the MAC indoor crown at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Mich., in March, 1976.

As a qualifier for the 1976 NCAA indoor track and field championships at Detroit’s Cobo Hall, Francis finished “out of the money” behind eventual champion and soon-to-be Olympic champion Dwight Stone of Long Beach State who cleared 7-3. Francis would redeem himself by earning track and field All-America honors at the prestigious NCAA outdoor meet held at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field that June.

At Penn, Francis easily skied at 7-1 and finished in sixth place in an original field of 39 of the country’s best high jumpers, and just missed a higher finish when he nicked the bar while attempting a personal best at 7-3. Francis’ height of 7-1 was only one inch off the qualifying standard for the upcoming World Olympics track trials.

Under the NCAA format, all athletes advancing to final berths following eliminations are accorded All-America status.

In recognition of his many collegiate honors, including being selected captain of the Kent State track team in his senior year, Francis was elected to the Kent State Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993.