A Girl With Balls
Like predators attracted to the scent of a meal, college coaches zero in on the nation’s most talented high school athletes year after year, bombarding them with affection and promises. Representatives from the nation’s leading universities often converge on the same target, leading to a frenzy that can leave a young athlete’s head spinning.
For some supertalented seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, this heavy recruiting will result in the last decision about their own futures they will be able to make until many years later — if they’re good and lucky enough to become free agents in the professional leagues. So the pressure to make the wisest, most potentially lucrative decision of which college to attend is intense.
And though they might be the first to come to mind, Tony Temple and Kareem Rush aren’t the only local stars to generate such excitement. A flashy all-state guard, one known for crisp, no-look passes and behind-the-back dribbles, faced such a choice not long ago. The top prospect at a powerhouse high school program, this sharpshooter received hundreds of letters and pamphlets from Division I schools.
In 2000, Katie Houlehan was Kansas City’s most-wanted baller.
She considered Creighton and Iowa, both reliable athletic juggernauts that would offer her prime exposure and likely postseason play. She thought about South Dakota, which not only had a top-10 team but also would be a getaway school, offering a way to leave the area and her massive family and find herself.
Finally, she mulled over a prospect that offered none of these things:
The school had never made an NCAA tournament.
It drew crowds that were smaller than some Katie had seen in grade school.
It had gone 2-25 the year before and finished with just six scholarship players.
And it was right here in Kansas City, which meant there would be no escaping her family. Her older brothers could still intimidate her dates, and her father’s often critical voice would still boom from the stands at every home game.
She weighed her options, and then she chose the University of Missouri-Kansas City, despite the fact that she seemed way out of its league.
Since Katie’s arrival, UMKC has experienced a resurgence, drawing more than a thousand fans to home wins over Big 12 opponents such as the University of Kansas and luring other top players from the two-state area. With this fresh talent in place and Katie playing in her junior year, UMKC moved to a best-ever 3-0 conference record and has since extended that mark to 7-0. The program now boasts a credible coaching staff and much-improved facilities, making it even more attractive to future recruits.
And much of it can be traced back to Katie’s decision to stay in Kansas City, a choice so many homegrown actors, athletes, artists and musicians have opted against. More so than the Royals and the Chiefs, both made up of myriad mercenaries, or the Tigers and Jayhawks, both stocked with out-of-state ringers, UMKC is Kansas City’s team.
And Katie Houlehan is the player who has made it a winner.
There’s an eruption high up in the bleachers of Swinney Auditorium on January 12. Down on the court, Katie has made an opponent bite on a faked jumper, then driven and made a sensational left-handed layup.
The source of the booming applause is Katie’s father, John Houlehan, who sits in the upper reaches of the stands because he’s the sort of fan who can make whole sections of other spectators wince in unison.
Just moments after Katie’s layup, at the other end, a Valparaiso guard slips past her, and John explodes again. This time, he sounds less than pleased.
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“Get on her! GET ON HER! Damn it!” he bellows.
John reacts loudly to almost every play in which his daughter is involved, slamming his fist against the wooden seats and barking, “Don’t touch!” whenever she commits a careless foul. He claps with seismic force, as if crafting thunder between his palms. And he offers almost equal praise for Katie’s teammates. “Great pass!” might be his third most-used yell, after “Don’t touch!” and, to encourage high, graceful shots, “Arch!”
To understand Katie Houlehan, and the forces that drive her, it’s helpful to know the family that formed her. Particularly her parents, who never miss a game their daughter plays in — but watch from very separate areas in the stands.
While John bellows and fumes near the top row, Nancy Houlehan is close to the floor, where Katie can hear her advice about adjusting her shots.
“We establish our territory like animals,” John says.
“He’s way too critical for me,” Nancy counters. “He has perfection in his head.”
At a January 19 game against Western Illinois, Nancy and her sister Julie shout supportive slogans: “Teamwork!” “You can do it!” “Let’s go, DEFENSE!”
One of five sisters who played the game, Nancy knows basketball. (Her older sister Prudy Boan became the first woman to be inducted into Baker University’s sports hall of fame.) But unlike her husband, she keeps her criticism low-key. When Katie takes an ill-advised shot within close range of 6-foot-7-inch center Zane Teilane and gets rejected, Nancy deadpans, “That didn’t work.”
Though Nancy is something of an expert, she admits that the game has changed vastly since she suited up for traveling teams in the late ’60s and early ’70s. At the time, women’s basketball wasn’t a scholarship sport, or even an organized one. Sponsors paid for uniforms and equipment, but the players covered their own food and motel expenses. As a teenager, Nancy, a tough-rebounding forward, played against opponents more than twice her age because there were no high school squads and no age limits.
“Most of my family is athletic,” Nancy says. “My five brothers are all excellent golfers. When you have that many children, you can’t always go out for movies or shopping. So we always made games out of things.”
Katie also developed an early affinity for sports, tagging along with her older brothers, Johnny, Jimmy and Joe.
“That’s all we did,” she says. “I didn’t have Barbie dolls, other than the ones I blew up in firecracker wars.”
Katie started fetching balls at her brothers’ basketball practices when she was four years old. Technically, girls could participate in the YMCA league, but there were no other female players when Nancy became a coach and added her kindergarten-age daughter to the team. By grade school, Katie was launching — and making— half-court shots.
“They called her ‘Downtown,'” recalls John, an executive vice president at US Bank. “She had no fear of playing boys.”
Katie also played tennis, following in Nancy’s footsteps. Her mother took up the sport after her basketball career ended, and she eventually competed at the national level. Katie’s brother Johnny played tennis for three years at Rockhurst High School. But for Katie, it was only a brief distraction.
“I got burned out,” she says. “That was my main sport when I was growing up. I was playing tournaments every weekend. It wasn’t fun anymore. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
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“My parents never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do,” Katie continues. “They encouraged academics more than anything. They told me sports can only get you so far.”
Though Katie’s brothers initially resented her appearances at their basketball practices, she eventually convinced them that she was a worthy opponent. The four would hold all-out, no-fouls-allowed games of 21 on the half-court in the family’s back yard.
Her brothers weren’t the only converts.
“When John and I married, I was still competing,” Nancy says. “He told me, ‘I don’t want you playing ball anymore.'”
However, after seeing Katie play and noting the changing climate toward women’s sports, John changed his tune and coached his daughter in fifth and sixth grade. The team won three straight Catholic Youth Organization championships. And when Katie practiced with her Amateur Athletic Union team, the Kansas Belles, John would bring his own lawn chair to watch in comfort.
Now it was John’s turn to convince nonbelievers. He called family friend Mike McNamara almost every night for two months, asking him to coach the St. Thomas More girls’ middle school team. Finally, McNamara showed up for a practice.
“After about five minutes of watching Katie, I couldn’t say no,” he says.
McNamara became Katie’s shooting companion, rebounding her shots until 11 p.m. and teaching her to say “swish” with every release, a confidence-building incantation she still recites.
Katie still carried the nickname “Shorty” when she enrolled at Bishop Miege High School. She was a “five-foot-nothing” guard at a storied program that already had claimed eleven Kansas 5A state championships. But she started immediately there as a freshman, and she turned heads.
However, under the watch of gruff, old-school Terry English, the first girls’ coach in Kansas to win 400 games, no one player could ascend to true all-star status.
“With Coach English, it’s never about individuals,” Katie says. “A lot of parents see that as him wanting all the credit, but really he’s just helping you to prepare for the next level.”
As a Stag, Katie scored more than 1,000 points, earned two All-Metro mentions and averaged 15 points, 4 rebounds, 4 steals and 4 assists a game in leading the Bishop Miege to its twelfth Kansas 5A state championship in 2000.
She also was a four-year varsity golfer, earning East Kansas League and Regional Champion honors in 2000 and placing seventh in the state tournament.
She was the stuff college recruiters dream of.
Katie’s favorite jam band, O.A.R., was scheduled to play on a weeknight in Lawrence recently, but the dedicated player didn’t give in to the temptation to go.
“I have to sacrifice a lot of things,” she says. Daily 6 a.m. practices take their toll on her social life, and she admits to enjoying other less-than-glamorous pursuits: housework, redecorating, gardening and preparing meals for the team. “I love kids, too,” she says. “I baby-sit all the time.” She pauses and laughs. “I’m not a dork,” she insists with a smile.
Katie does occasionally go out dancing with her teammates. “Just for fun,” she says. “We’re not good. I make a fool of myself. I’m kind of a clown.”
She clarifies many of her comments with self-effacing disclaimers, many of which seem unnecessary. After revealing that she’s a closet rap fan, she says, “I can’t rap or anything.”
Discussing her game, she’s brutally blunt. “I have no street feel to me,” she says. “I’m the whitest person. I’m as old-school as they come, pick-and-roll, backdoor cut, go off the screens, do the basics. I don’t look fancy out there.”
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Katie laughs, just a little, after almost everything she says. It seems natural, since it often follows a witty remark. It’s a charming habit that communicates confidence more than nervousness. But it’s also a defensive maneuver, a way to shrug off years of mockery.
“I always get made fun of,” Katie says. “I go home and get made fun of, then I go to school and get made fun of.”
She’s not safe from scrutiny while socializing at the Plaza or Brookside, because big brothers Jimmy and Johnny are still in Kansas City. (Joe is now in Chicago.)
“If my brothers see me out, it’s the most embarrassing thing,” she says. “I was talking to a gentleman, just talking, and they picked me up and said, ‘You can’t talk to her, you can’t touch her, you can’t date her.’ I can’t go out without having one of those guys seeing me. It hurts my game, because the guys get scared.”
If her vigilant brothers don’t scare off some players, others may simply be intimidated by her striking features and lithe 5-foot-9-inch frame.
“I don’t want to get too bulky,” Katie says. But when she’s asked if her concerns about gaining muscle have to do with maintaining a supple shooter’s arm, she interrupts with another reason: “I’ve got to get married sometime.” It’s a surprising reminder that for this goal-oriented guard, thoughts about life after college aren’t necessarily centered on her pro-basketball prospects.
After all the good-natured abuse Katie has taken over the years, she’s built up an immunity of sorts, which can minimize the effectiveness of some motivational tactics.
“My first year, Coach told me, ‘This girl’s going to school you,’ but that doesn’t bother me, because I’ve been made fun of so much,” she says. “It’s natural. I laugh it off. Then they make fun of my laugh.”
Katie’s thick skin enables her to disregard her coaches’ tone and listen only to their messages. At one early-season practice, Katie started forcing shots, launching them from awkward positions. “We don’t shoot off-balance shots, Katie,” UMKC Coach Dana Eikenberg said. Later, Eikenberg stopped a situational scrimmage and approached her. “Wait on screens, please understand that,” she said in a sterner tone. “Wait on freakin’ screens. I get tired of saying the same damn thing.”
“My mental game is getting tougher,” Katie says. “If the coaches didn’t get on me, I’d worry, because that would mean they’d given up.”
But even if they didn’t hound her a little, she says, the criticism wouldn’t end.
“I’m the biggest critic of myself,” she says before correcting herself. “My dad and I.”
Throughout her junior year at Bishop Miege, Katie and her family shuffled through the scores of letters that arrived from college coaches.
“I was never going to stay here,” Katie says. “But I had friends who went to these distant schools, and half of them came back homesick. I might joke around and say, ‘Oh, my God, they’re so annoying,’ but I would miss my mom and dad so much.”
On November 18, 2000, Katie signed a letter of intent to play basketball and golf at UMKC. “If I’m going to play in college, I wanted to play in an area where people know me and I feel comfortable,” she told The Kansas City Star at the time. “Everything about UMKC was a surprise to me.”
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Surprise was certainly the operative word. Katie signing with UMKC was like seeing locally born Oscar-winner Chris Cooper ink a deal with the New Theatre Restaurant.
UMKC was a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics school from 1980 to 1987, compiling a 159-48 record and twice finishing in the nation’s top five. But when it made the jump to NCAA Division I, UMKC stumbled through consecutive 9-16 seasons, then improved when Coach Brian Alger brought a new focus on defense. The team led the nation in denying other teams points three straight years, including an NCAA record that stood until Utah surpassed it last season. After Alger left, though, the team fell into a funk. UMKC hasn’t ended the year above .500 since the 1992-93 season.
When Eikenberg, a former Penn State point guard with assistant-coaching experience at Illinois, Indiana State and Iowa, arrived at UMKC in 2000, the program had reached its nadir. Of the twelve players she expected to find her first season as a head coach, four were international recruits who were declared ineligible, and two didn’t anticipate a demanding Division I environment.
“They were hoping for leisure basketball,” Eikenberg says of a squad that would finish the year 2-25. “This program didn’t have a real fire for women’s basketball. And when you’re losing, it’s difficult to get people to believe in your system. When you lose game after game, it’s hard for people to realize there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
During the off-season, Eikenberg searched for premium prospects, though she admits she put too much stock in ability and not enough emphasis on chemistry.
“We made a couple mistakes with our recruiting,” she says. “We were excited to have anybody, because our numbers were so low, but we didn’t necessarily take team players that were committed to a strong work ethic.”
Eikenberg did land one coup, though, when Katie opted for UMKC.
“I knew of her when I was at Iowa,” Eikenberg says. “She made a name for herself on the AAU circuit. Miege is a well-known school, so we knew we could establish ourselves in the KC area. She was our one guinea pig. If she was successful and enjoyed it, then others would follow. She was able to help us root ourselves in the community.”
The transition was jarring for Katie, who arrived from a high school program that had already cemented its reputation.
“The biggest difference was the atmosphere,” she says. “Miege has such a strong community base, and there are always alumni, so they have huge crowds. Here, the crowds were very small, and the losing was hard.”
With Katie setting UMKC freshman records for three-pointers attempted and made as well as for scoring and free-throw percentage, the team improved to 7-21 in 2001, then made a major move to 14-14 (and 8-6 in the conference) in 2002.
“Katie Houlehan wanted to stay in Kansas City and make a difference, and she’s doing that,” says Assistant Coach Jody Adams, who played point guard for the NCAA national champion Tennessee Lady Vols in 1991. “She’ll be one of the best, hopefully, when she leaves.”
By some measures, Katie already is one of UMKC’s greatest players. Entering the season, she ranked seventh in career scoring average, third in three-pointers made and first in free-throw percentage. Last season, she ranked ninth in the nation in free-throw percentage. She became the fastest player in school history to net 100 career three-pointers.
But her reputation won’t really shine until she takes a team to the NCAA tournament. A preseason poll last fall ranked UMKC third in the nine-team Mid-Con conference, and Katie was named to the All-Conference first team.
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The season opened promisingly when UMKC handily defeated KU at Swinney in front of 1,584 fans, the third-highest attendance in team history.
Looking at the team’s talent, it’s easy to see Katie’s influence on nearly the entire roster. Guard Casey Ellis played in the AAU with Katie after her freshman season at Johnson County Community College, which she says was a deciding factor in her move to UMKC. Point guard Sammi Knapic, from Kingman, Kansas, teamed with Moore in the AAU and saw Katie play in a regional all-star game before choosing UMKC over Oklahoma State. Erin Pauk, the team’s freshman floor leader from St. Charles, weighed Missouri and Valparaiso before becoming a Kangaroo.
Before Katie established that UMKC made sense for all-state players, the team wouldn’t have had much of a chance luring this caliber of talent.
Fellow standout Carlai Moore, the type of top-notch Kansas City product on which UMKC used to give up immediately, arrived from Sumner Academy. When forward Tenille Grant graduated from Grandview High School four years ago, UMKC didn’t pursue her. She attended the University of Southern California, but she has transferred to UMKC now that she sees the school’s team has improved.
“There was a different coaching staff then, and they didn’t recruit me, because they figured I wanted to go to a bigger university,” Grant says.
But even the most impressive collection of players needs time to jell. This process was stalled significantly when Knapic, who runs the team’s offense, suffered an early knee injury. UMKC lost early and often, including a 79-52 debacle at Northern Iowa in which Katie was 0 for 6 from the field and the rudderless team managed just four assists. When a loss to West Virginia dropped UMKC’s record to 3-7, postseason play seemed unlikely.
Looking to shake up the rotation, Eikenberg benched Katie and Moore, two of the team’s three top scorers, after the fifth game of the season in November. Freshman Jayme Sweere and Grant started in their places.
“Those were hard decisions to make,” Eikenberg says. “But Katie and Carlai understood why we needed to do it. They were putting too much pressure on themselves.”
Both responded with top-scoring efforts off the bench, and UMKC has gone on a 7-1 run since the lineup change, including seven straight conference wins.
“As long as we’re winning, I don’t care about coming off the bench,” Katie says. “She does the call, and I’ll do the role. If I get down on myself, I bring the team down.”
Resting a player like Katie is a luxury that UMKC couldn’t have afforded in the past. Just four years ago, it struggled even to fill out its starting lineup. Now, depth is one of its strengths.
“We’ve never been able to rotate six or seven players in and have three or four people in double figures,” Eikenberg says.
As the only UMKC player with two years of experience as a Division I starter, Katie has become the team’s leader, a role with which she was not initially comfortable, in part because she’s so unaccustomed to it. From growing up with three older brothers to playing on varsity teams in high school and college as a freshman, Katie has always been the baby-face in the crowd.”It’s so different that I’m old,” Katie says. “The first year, we had eight players and we were extremely young. Unfortunately, I’m the only one left of that group. This year is really different. When you’re young, you don’t feel as much responsibility. I feel like the grandma of the team. It’s hard to change and accept that people are looking up to me.”
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Playing through pain isn’t risky just for the long-term physical damage it can do. If you’re Kirk Gibson, hobbling off the training-room table to hit a game-winning home run, or Willis Reed, scoring the first two buckets of the deciding game of the NBA finals on a lifeless leg, then your story becomes an inspirational example of self-sacrifice. If, however, you play poorly on a broken wing or a busted wheel, you’ve handicapped your team’s chance of winning. No one lauds Bill Buckner’s grit because the baseball that trickled through his legs passed between two ravaged knees. In the minds of coaches and fans, it’s a fine line between being selfless and selfish when it comes to ignoring injuries.
Katie walked that line on March 8, 2003, at the Conoco Mid-Continent Conference Women’s Basketball Tournament Quarterfinal at Kemper Arena. Her team was favored, a 14-13 squad with the home-city advantage against Oakland, its 11-15 opponent. UMKC had beaten Oakland earlier in the year, with Katie scoring a career-high 35 points. But no one — not the players or coaches on either team, not the fans, not even the sharpshooter that it directly involved — knew how great a disadvantage the Kangaroos faced because of Katie’s unannounced malady.
Playing with serious stress fractures in her feet, Katie scored zero points and missed four shots in a gimpy sixteen minutes. Eikenberg, seeing that Katie couldn’t get her legs under her jumpers, sat her down for the second half, and Oakland cruised to an 81-62 victory in front of a conference-tournament record crowd of 2,257. None of this — the sizable audience, the positive postseason prospects — would have been likely before Katie’s arrival. But after carrying so much weight in bringing the team to this point, she had little left to give.
Katie isn’t used to sitting out games because of injuries. Not because she’s been fortunate in avoiding them; she has nicked, bruised, sprained, twisted or strained almost every joint and appendage. But growing up with two coaching parents and three older brothers, there were no sympathetic shoulders. There was no safety on the sidelines.
“My mom says, ‘You’re never hurt. Suck it up,'” Katie says. “They love me. They don’t neglect me, but they don’t think I’m hurt.”
“It’s a different generation,” Nancy says. “When I was playing, as long as it wasn’t broken, you kept playing. And she’d be the first one upset if I told her she couldn’t play.”
This year, Katie is healthier, and having some time to rest has helped keep away the nagging injuries. But she isn’t sure how long she’ll continue to play.
Though she will graduate in May with a business degree, Katie retains one year of eligibility in both golf and basketball. After that, though, her future in hoops is uncertain. Eikenberg and Adams, both of whom have dealt with WNBA talent in their playing and coaching careers, say Katie needs to advance her game to play professionally.
“That’s a pretty extreme level, and I’m not sure Katie’s there yet,” Eikenberg says. “Katie’s gift is shooting, but she has to improve her strength and quickness to be able to play on the defensive end at the next level. And she needs to add a counter to that shot by being a strong penetrator. A good shooter can be taken out of your offense.”
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“She has the talent, work ethic, attitude and competitiveness,” Adams says. “If a team just needs a shooter, she has all the other intangibles.”
Coaching might be another option.
“I’ll definitely be involved somehow, going to the games or coaching,” Katie says. “If I have kids, I’ll coach them … maybe. I don’t know, after having my dad as a coach. But I love the game so much I probably can’t get out of it.”
First, though, there’s the matter of the Oakland rematch. UMKC beat Oakland 78-72 in Rochester, Michigan, on January 24 behind Moore’s 28 points and Katie’s two pivotal three-pointers. This isn’t exactly the same Oakland team that beat UMKC last March. Katie Wolfe, who scored 41 points in that game, graduated, leaving Shawnee Mission Northwest graduate Jayme Wilson, an impressive yet less-explosive player, as the team’s top threat.
Still, UMKC’s coaches aren’t shying away from the revenge angle. They’ve prepared a motivational T-shirt for the occasion that reads “March 8, 2003: Oakland 81, UMKC 62: NFAD.” The acronym stands for “never forget a defeat.” But even though Katie and the four teammates who suffered through that setback remember what it’s like to lose, UMKC seems finally to have learned how to win.
Since joining Division I, UMKC has been 2-10 against Oakland, 2-9 against Kansas and 5-14 against Valparaiso; it’s 3-0 versus these teams this year.
“Nobody knows about UMKC,” Katie says. “We’re starting a tradition, developing it and making it stronger every year.”
On February 9, UMKC again plays its rival Oakland, this time on its home court in Swinney Auditorium. It’s a regular-season matchup, but there’s still a lot at stake. After a slow start, UMKC is gathering momentum for tournament time with a best-ever 7-0 conference record. And Katie, who started the season with a slump that led to her losing her starting spot for the first time in her basketball career, hopes to redeem her worst game.
More important, she wants to send a message: This March, when the tournament returns to town, she’ll be ready.
