ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 24, 1997 TAG: 9704240051
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB TEITLEBAUM THE ROANOKE TIMES
The oldest Cosmopolitan Club record belongs to former William Fleming standout Robert Franklin.
The oldest area track and field record - Robert Franklin's 21.4 seconds in the 220-yard dash set 23 years ago - will not be broken this week when the Cosmopolitan Club holds the area's biggest regular season meet Saturday at Salem High School. Why? The event is no longer held and has been replaced by the 200-meter run.
Most people know Franklin as the man who sells print and screen T-shirts as well as NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball hats and shirts at local basketball tournaments each winter. The name of his store is Franklin Pro Shop.
He also is a member of one of Roanoke's most famous athletic families. He is not as well known as brother Mike Franklin, who led Jefferson High School to the 1970 Group AAA boys' basketball championship and later served as an assistant basketball coach at Patrick Henry.
Four years after his oldest brother starred at Jefferson, Robert Franklin, a senior at William Fleming, was a three-sport star in football, basketball and track. Track was his best sport as he ran a time of 21.4 seconds in the 220-yard dash to win the Cosmo title.
The 220-yard run has been replaced by the 200-meter event. Patrick Henry's Jamie Price (21.58 seconds automatic time) and a couple of runners who had 21.6 seconds hand-held time are the listed Cosmo record holders at that distance.
Franklin says if his time was converted to the 200 meters - which is three yards shorter than the 220 he ran - he would have a time equal to 21.2 seconds. That's better than any of the existing Cosmo 200-meter records.
Franklin blazed to a 21.4 time in the Group AAA meet, but had to settle for a second behind Albemarle's Ronnie Harris, whose 21.3 clocking set a state record.
``I've been keeping up with all this since I came back to Roanoke in 1980,'' said Franklin, who graduated from East Carolina that year. He won the Southern Conference title in the 400-meter dash while competing for the Pirates.
Franklin coached at Ruffner Middle School until 1990 before he quit to start a private business and counsel delinquent boys. Robert Franklin is also president of the Northwest tennis club that works with inner-city kids to get them interested in that sport.
Nathaniel Franklin is the oldest of the three Franklin brothers. ``He didn't play football,'' said Robert Franklin. ``He played basketball for Jefferson. But he had an outstanding arm and was a great quarterback [in junior high].''
You might not have seen the last of this family of outstanding boys' athletes. Nat Franklin, Nathaniel's son and a freshman at Northside, was the fourth-leading scorer on the boys' varsity team this year with 147 points in 23 games.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Franklinby CNB