Army West Point Athletics
MISSION FIRST: Circle of Life
October 06, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Athletics
Kevin Houston sat at a corner table in a coffee shop called 'Jane on Main,' that sits across the street from the train station in Pearl River, N.Y. When he had walked in the door a few minutes earlier, everyone in the place had greeted him by name, not so much in the manner of Norm from 'Cheers,' as in the manner of the kid everyone has known all his life.
It was a comfortable April afternoon and it was pretty clear that Houston was in a very good place in his life – literally and figuratively.
"I guess you could say I haven't gone very far in life," he says with a laugh. "This is where I started and, all these years later, this is where I still am."
Perhaps. But the full circle story would be incomplete without filling in all the stops along the way. Even at 51, Houston still has the freckle-faced boyish looks of the kid everyone thinks they want to guard until a basketball game starts. Then he takes his first shot and all of a sudden no one wants to guard him anymore.
"When I came out of high school, I was 5-feet, 11 inches and I might have weighed 145 pounds," he says. "I wasn't very impressive to look at in a basketball uniform." He smiles. "But I could always find a way to get the ball in the basket."
That ability to get the ball in the basket came in handy during Houston's four years at West Point. By the time he graduated in 1987, he had gotten the ball into the basket enough to score 2,325 points. He was Army's all-time leading scorer then and today, as his jersey hangs from the rafters in Christl Arena, he's still the all-time leading scorer.
When Houston was a senior at Pearl River High School, two Army coaches saw something in him in spite of his unimpressive physique. One was Les Fertig, who was an assistant to Pete Gaudet when Gaudet was Army's head coach. The other was Les Wothke, who kept Fertig on his staff when he succeeded Gaudet in 1982 and then heeded his advice to go see the kid with the freckles shoot the basketball during tryouts that were being held on the post that summer.
Like Fertig, Wothke understood that a player who can score from almost anywhere is valuable, regardless of his size. He suggested that Houston consider going to Army's prep school.
Houston wasn't sure. "It was the military thing," he says. "I wasn't so sure I wanted that."
That was where his father stepped in. Jerry Houston was a gifted player himself, who once scored 69 points in a high school game, before going on to play for Joe Lapchick at St. John's. He was the captain of Lapchick's last team in 1965 and made the clinching free throws in the National Invitation Tournament championship game against Villanova.
Jerry Houston believed his son could be a very good college player. He also knew that he was going to need more than basketball once he graduated from college. He liked the idea of the prep school, especially because he was friends with Harry Beale, who happened to be the Dean of Students at the prep school at the time. What's more, Jerry pointed out, if military life was too tough, Kevin would have another year to get bigger and hone his game and then choose somewhere else to go to college.
"Once I settled in academically, I loved the experience."
He certainly had no complaints about his basketball experience. In four years Houston never failed to start a game – 113 in all. He still remembers his first game at the University of San Diego when he was about to be introduced. "Coach Wothke looked at me and said, 'First of more than 100.'"
Even Wothke couldn't have imagined how good the tough little guard with the sweet jumper would become. He was named Rookie of the Year in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. As a sophomore, he averaged 15.1 points per game and combined with captain Randy Cozzens to lead Army to a 16-13 record – the only winning season the Black Knights would have from 1979 to 2013. As a junior, with Cozzens having graduated, Houston's scoring average jumped to 22.3 even though defenses were gearing to stop him.
"We knew he was coming," says Jim Calhoun, then the coach at Northeastern. "And we still couldn't stop him."
Those three seasons were just a prelude, though, to Houston's senior season. It was the first year that college basketball had a three-point shot and no one was a better three-point shooter than Houston. Even though Army had no other double-figure scorer. Houston averaged 32.9 points per game to lead the nation in scoring and scored 953 points.
To put that point total in perspective consider this: In the 112 seasons of Army basketball 28 other players have scored 1,000 points – in their CAREERS.
Houston's final regular season game was a loss – at Navy – to a David Robinson-led team. The Midshipmen needed overtime to win the game in large part because Houston poured in 37 points.
"He humiliated me that day," says Doug Wojcik, Navy's point guard and an excellent player in his own right. "I simply couldn't stop him. I tried everything except pleading. Then I started to plead: I kept saying, 'It's Senior Day, you're embarrassing me in front of all my friends and my entire family.' Please stop."
In the end, Robinson simply wouldn't let his team lose. But he never forgot how tough it was to play against Houston. Both men graduated in the spring of 1987 and spent part of their post-graduate time playing as teammates on the All-Armed Forces team. They became good friends, close enough that Houston was invited to Robinson's induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Like most "gym-rats," Houston found it tough to give up the game. He was invited to the United States Olympic Trials in 1988 but head coach John Thompson cut him fairly early in the tryouts. He only kept one player who was a true shooter – Bradley University's Hersey Hawkins. When Hawkins rolled an ankle during the Games, the U.S. had no outside shooting threat and lost in the semifinals to the Soviet Union.
As it turned out, that was the last U.S. team made up of college players. Four years later, the "Dream Team" represented the United States in Barcelona. By then, Houston had moved on with his life – although he did have brief training camp stints with the Washington Bullets and New Jersey Nets and played on weekends in the Eastern Basketball League for several years.
He married Liz Cuccia, his high school sweetheart right after graduation and went to work for Verizon in their corporate security division. Three children came along – Lauren, Luke and LeAnne – and Houston stayed connected to basketball, first through brother Jerry, who became the coach at Pearl River in 1997 and then by coaching at a nearby private school.
Life was good.
And then, it became a nightmare. In 2004, Liz began to feel weak for reasons no one could explain. Tests revealed she had a rare disease called Scleroderma, which affects and infects the connective tissues in the body. There's no cure and it is degenerative.
"The doctors told us it shouldn't be fatal – at least not right away," Houston says. "They thought she could live into her 50s."
They were wrong. Right after Christmas in 2008, Liz came down with pneumonia. Her immune system was already weak and she had to be hospitalized. There had been other hospital stays and she had always bounced back. This time, she didn't. On Jan. 3, 2009, she passed away. Lauren was 20, Luke 16 and LeAnne was 14.
"In a sense, basketball helped us get through that time," Kevin says. "Luke was playing for my brother and we all kind of rallied around him and the team and tried to throw ourselves into basketball.
"But the other thing was being a grad of West Point. The support I got from my teammates, from classmates, from guys I'd barely known when I was in college was unbelievable. I was wounded – badly wounded. And they were all there to try to help me get back on my feet."
Nine months after Liz's death, he was re-introduced to Eileen Bellew, who had been through a tragedy much like what Kevin had been through. In January 2005, her husband, John, had been one of two New York City firefighters killed while battling a huge fire in the Bronx. Eileen was left with four very young children. A mutual friend suggested it might be cathartic for the two of them to talk to one another.
It was cathartic and it was fun. Kevin heard himself laughing again. The same was true for Eileen. They had plenty in common: Both had grown up in Pearl River – in fact, they later discovered that Eileen and Liz had lived on the same block, though at different times. Eileen had also been a college basketball player, at nearby Dominican College. And, of course, both were dealing with the shocking loss of a young spouse and the challenges that came with suddenly being single parents.
"My kids were older," Kevin says. "When John died, Eileen's youngest (Kieran) was less than a year old." He smiles. "Once we started dating we realized we were sort of a modern day version of The Brady Bunch."
They were engaged in 2011 and, on a whim, entered a contest being conducted by Kelly Ripa. The winners got a "dream wedding" in Hawai'i. Contestants were asked to tell the story about how they met and became engaged. Viewers selected the winners.
The following January, on the night before the contest winners were to be announced, Kevin stopped at Eileen's house on the way home. It was starting to snow and Eileen suggested he spend the night. Kevin wanted to be home to help LeAnne get up and out for school in the morning. It was a mistake.
"By the time I got on the Palisades it was snowing HARD," he says. "I came around a curve and lost control," he says. "I spun out and I can still remember wondering if I would hit something or plunge over the restraining wall and down a cliff."
He hit a wall and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and knew that he had bumped his head. Dazed, he got out of the car and, when another car stopped to call 911, he called Eileen.
As luck would have it, Eileen was watching an old VHS tape she'd been given by Kevin's mother of a game at Fordham his senior year. Seeing Kevin's number come up she picked up the phone and said, "Did you play ANY defense at all?"
"If I hadn't been so banged up I'd have told her, 'Yeah, but I scored 42 that night and we won,'" Kevin says. "But I figured I'd better just tell her what happened."
The next day, Kevin and Eileen won the dream wedding. They were married a month later.
Now, Luke has just finished a superb Division III career at Southern Connecticut University and Eileen's son Joe is going to play junior varsity ball as a ninth grader at Pearl River next fall. His coaches will be Jerry Houston Jr; Kevin Houston and Jerry Houston Sr. – who helps his sons coach the team. Life, once again, is good.
"It's funny, I think all the time about the old joke cadets tell about West Point being a great place to be FROM," Kevin says. "I was one of those guys who actually enjoyed myself while I was there.
"When I was a cadet we were always told that the key to success was to cooperate and graduate. Back then, they were just words to me.
"Now I realize they apply to everything in my life. You need to know how to treat people to get the most out of them – and out of yourself. You want to maximize potential every single day. That's what West Point is really all about. That's what I learned that I've carried with me – with my kids, all seven of them – and with everyone I've ever worked with.
"I'm not sure I understood it then, but I promise you I understand it now."
Kevin Houston may be back where he started. He may joke about not having gone very far in life. But it's pretty apparent that he's had a remarkable journey to get to where he is today.
It was a comfortable April afternoon and it was pretty clear that Houston was in a very good place in his life – literally and figuratively.
"I guess you could say I haven't gone very far in life," he says with a laugh. "This is where I started and, all these years later, this is where I still am."
Perhaps. But the full circle story would be incomplete without filling in all the stops along the way. Even at 51, Houston still has the freckle-faced boyish looks of the kid everyone thinks they want to guard until a basketball game starts. Then he takes his first shot and all of a sudden no one wants to guard him anymore.
"When I came out of high school, I was 5-feet, 11 inches and I might have weighed 145 pounds," he says. "I wasn't very impressive to look at in a basketball uniform." He smiles. "But I could always find a way to get the ball in the basket."
That ability to get the ball in the basket came in handy during Houston's four years at West Point. By the time he graduated in 1987, he had gotten the ball into the basket enough to score 2,325 points. He was Army's all-time leading scorer then and today, as his jersey hangs from the rafters in Christl Arena, he's still the all-time leading scorer.
When Houston was a senior at Pearl River High School, two Army coaches saw something in him in spite of his unimpressive physique. One was Les Fertig, who was an assistant to Pete Gaudet when Gaudet was Army's head coach. The other was Les Wothke, who kept Fertig on his staff when he succeeded Gaudet in 1982 and then heeded his advice to go see the kid with the freckles shoot the basketball during tryouts that were being held on the post that summer.
Like Fertig, Wothke understood that a player who can score from almost anywhere is valuable, regardless of his size. He suggested that Houston consider going to Army's prep school.
Houston wasn't sure. "It was the military thing," he says. "I wasn't so sure I wanted that."
That was where his father stepped in. Jerry Houston was a gifted player himself, who once scored 69 points in a high school game, before going on to play for Joe Lapchick at St. John's. He was the captain of Lapchick's last team in 1965 and made the clinching free throws in the National Invitation Tournament championship game against Villanova.
Jerry Houston believed his son could be a very good college player. He also knew that he was going to need more than basketball once he graduated from college. He liked the idea of the prep school, especially because he was friends with Harry Beale, who happened to be the Dean of Students at the prep school at the time. What's more, Jerry pointed out, if military life was too tough, Kevin would have another year to get bigger and hone his game and then choose somewhere else to go to college.
"Once I settled in academically, I loved the experience."
He certainly had no complaints about his basketball experience. In four years Houston never failed to start a game – 113 in all. He still remembers his first game at the University of San Diego when he was about to be introduced. "Coach Wothke looked at me and said, 'First of more than 100.'"
Even Wothke couldn't have imagined how good the tough little guard with the sweet jumper would become. He was named Rookie of the Year in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. As a sophomore, he averaged 15.1 points per game and combined with captain Randy Cozzens to lead Army to a 16-13 record – the only winning season the Black Knights would have from 1979 to 2013. As a junior, with Cozzens having graduated, Houston's scoring average jumped to 22.3 even though defenses were gearing to stop him.
"We knew he was coming," says Jim Calhoun, then the coach at Northeastern. "And we still couldn't stop him."
Those three seasons were just a prelude, though, to Houston's senior season. It was the first year that college basketball had a three-point shot and no one was a better three-point shooter than Houston. Even though Army had no other double-figure scorer. Houston averaged 32.9 points per game to lead the nation in scoring and scored 953 points.
To put that point total in perspective consider this: In the 112 seasons of Army basketball 28 other players have scored 1,000 points – in their CAREERS.
Houston's final regular season game was a loss – at Navy – to a David Robinson-led team. The Midshipmen needed overtime to win the game in large part because Houston poured in 37 points.
"He humiliated me that day," says Doug Wojcik, Navy's point guard and an excellent player in his own right. "I simply couldn't stop him. I tried everything except pleading. Then I started to plead: I kept saying, 'It's Senior Day, you're embarrassing me in front of all my friends and my entire family.' Please stop."
In the end, Robinson simply wouldn't let his team lose. But he never forgot how tough it was to play against Houston. Both men graduated in the spring of 1987 and spent part of their post-graduate time playing as teammates on the All-Armed Forces team. They became good friends, close enough that Houston was invited to Robinson's induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Like most "gym-rats," Houston found it tough to give up the game. He was invited to the United States Olympic Trials in 1988 but head coach John Thompson cut him fairly early in the tryouts. He only kept one player who was a true shooter – Bradley University's Hersey Hawkins. When Hawkins rolled an ankle during the Games, the U.S. had no outside shooting threat and lost in the semifinals to the Soviet Union.
As it turned out, that was the last U.S. team made up of college players. Four years later, the "Dream Team" represented the United States in Barcelona. By then, Houston had moved on with his life – although he did have brief training camp stints with the Washington Bullets and New Jersey Nets and played on weekends in the Eastern Basketball League for several years.
He married Liz Cuccia, his high school sweetheart right after graduation and went to work for Verizon in their corporate security division. Three children came along – Lauren, Luke and LeAnne – and Houston stayed connected to basketball, first through brother Jerry, who became the coach at Pearl River in 1997 and then by coaching at a nearby private school.
Life was good.
And then, it became a nightmare. In 2004, Liz began to feel weak for reasons no one could explain. Tests revealed she had a rare disease called Scleroderma, which affects and infects the connective tissues in the body. There's no cure and it is degenerative.
"The doctors told us it shouldn't be fatal – at least not right away," Houston says. "They thought she could live into her 50s."
They were wrong. Right after Christmas in 2008, Liz came down with pneumonia. Her immune system was already weak and she had to be hospitalized. There had been other hospital stays and she had always bounced back. This time, she didn't. On Jan. 3, 2009, she passed away. Lauren was 20, Luke 16 and LeAnne was 14.
"In a sense, basketball helped us get through that time," Kevin says. "Luke was playing for my brother and we all kind of rallied around him and the team and tried to throw ourselves into basketball.
"But the other thing was being a grad of West Point. The support I got from my teammates, from classmates, from guys I'd barely known when I was in college was unbelievable. I was wounded – badly wounded. And they were all there to try to help me get back on my feet."
Nine months after Liz's death, he was re-introduced to Eileen Bellew, who had been through a tragedy much like what Kevin had been through. In January 2005, her husband, John, had been one of two New York City firefighters killed while battling a huge fire in the Bronx. Eileen was left with four very young children. A mutual friend suggested it might be cathartic for the two of them to talk to one another.
It was cathartic and it was fun. Kevin heard himself laughing again. The same was true for Eileen. They had plenty in common: Both had grown up in Pearl River – in fact, they later discovered that Eileen and Liz had lived on the same block, though at different times. Eileen had also been a college basketball player, at nearby Dominican College. And, of course, both were dealing with the shocking loss of a young spouse and the challenges that came with suddenly being single parents.
"My kids were older," Kevin says. "When John died, Eileen's youngest (Kieran) was less than a year old." He smiles. "Once we started dating we realized we were sort of a modern day version of The Brady Bunch."
They were engaged in 2011 and, on a whim, entered a contest being conducted by Kelly Ripa. The winners got a "dream wedding" in Hawai'i. Contestants were asked to tell the story about how they met and became engaged. Viewers selected the winners.
The following January, on the night before the contest winners were to be announced, Kevin stopped at Eileen's house on the way home. It was starting to snow and Eileen suggested he spend the night. Kevin wanted to be home to help LeAnne get up and out for school in the morning. It was a mistake.
"By the time I got on the Palisades it was snowing HARD," he says. "I came around a curve and lost control," he says. "I spun out and I can still remember wondering if I would hit something or plunge over the restraining wall and down a cliff."
He hit a wall and felt a sharp pain in his shoulder and knew that he had bumped his head. Dazed, he got out of the car and, when another car stopped to call 911, he called Eileen.
As luck would have it, Eileen was watching an old VHS tape she'd been given by Kevin's mother of a game at Fordham his senior year. Seeing Kevin's number come up she picked up the phone and said, "Did you play ANY defense at all?"
"If I hadn't been so banged up I'd have told her, 'Yeah, but I scored 42 that night and we won,'" Kevin says. "But I figured I'd better just tell her what happened."
The next day, Kevin and Eileen won the dream wedding. They were married a month later.
Now, Luke has just finished a superb Division III career at Southern Connecticut University and Eileen's son Joe is going to play junior varsity ball as a ninth grader at Pearl River next fall. His coaches will be Jerry Houston Jr; Kevin Houston and Jerry Houston Sr. – who helps his sons coach the team. Life, once again, is good.
"It's funny, I think all the time about the old joke cadets tell about West Point being a great place to be FROM," Kevin says. "I was one of those guys who actually enjoyed myself while I was there.
"When I was a cadet we were always told that the key to success was to cooperate and graduate. Back then, they were just words to me.
"Now I realize they apply to everything in my life. You need to know how to treat people to get the most out of them – and out of yourself. You want to maximize potential every single day. That's what West Point is really all about. That's what I learned that I've carried with me – with my kids, all seven of them – and with everyone I've ever worked with.
"I'm not sure I understood it then, but I promise you I understand it now."
Kevin Houston may be back where he started. He may joke about not having gone very far in life. But it's pretty apparent that he's had a remarkable journey to get to where he is today.
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