Inductees

Joan competed on the women’s gymnastics team all four years while attending East Carolina University. She earned the Outstanding Woman in Gymnastics Award given by the school’s Health and Physical education Department. Joan was the head women’s gymnastics coach at Central Michigan University from 1975-78. The school hosted the National AAU Senior World Greco-Roman training camps where she met Lee Allen. In 1978, Joan moved to California and continued to work with Lee by providing elements of flexibility and gymnastics into his wrestling camps. In the summer of 1982 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Joan was an instructor at the National AAU Wrestling Camp in the areas of flexibility and tumbling as applicable to wrestling.

She also volunteered to manage the dorms for athletes at the Summer AAU National Team training camps. From 1978-1999, Joan and Lee, now her husband, worked side by side running wrestling tournaments, raising funds for athletes, and organizing travel to competitions for both Skyline College and for the San Francisco Peninsula Grapplers Club teams. From 1989-2012, Joan and Lee worked tirelessly to promote and support women’s wrestling, running their tournaments, fund-raising, and arranging travel. In 1990, they directed the first Women’s World Qualifier Tournament for the USA in Vallejo.

They often took girls to compete in Bay Area tournaments, and they fought for a Women’s Division. Daughters Sara and Katherine Fulp-Allen started wrestling at ages 4 and 7, and from 1999 -2010 the time and intensity of Joan’s promoting the sport for women increased while the girls wrestled at Half Moon Bay High School and then at Menlo College where Lee coached coach. Joan drove women’s teams to competitions throughout the state, coached her local girls high school team and worked with schools and coaches throughout the state to promote women’s wrestling. She created a recognition program for girls that attended the California Women’s Wrestling Association state tournament before CIF took it over.

Joan was an Assistant Coach at Menlo College from 2008-10, coordinating trips and travel, and serving on the Women’s College Wrestling Association oversight committee. From 2012-15, she was on the USAW Women’s Parents Involvement Committee, compiling a data base of alumni women wrestling in the country. Currently Joan is working on the USAW Girls High School Sanctioning Resource Committee creating online resources to support states working toward sanctioning high school championships for girls.