Winning coach of 68 state high school titles joins Kennesaw basketball staff

As the newly hired assistant men's basketball coach at Kennesaw State, Houle might now feel as if he's working part-time, restricted to one team.

Asked if a challenging transition awaits, he says, "Oh, heavens, yes. I've got to mentally prepare myself to focus every day on basketball."

The Owls head coach, Tony Ingle, foresees an adjustment period but is unconcerned.

"I've admired him from a distance for a long time," Ingle says.

Because the outrageous number of titles suggests he might be old enough to have removed balls from peach baskets, Houle scrubbed it from his job resume, replacing 75 with the vague "several." He is a youthful 57, fit and naturally caffeinated, brimming with the vigor of a 13-year-old, the age at which Houle was introduced to a calling that he has never willingly abandoned.

Houle's father, who ran the youth baseball program on a military base, faced a sudden vacancy when the coach of the Pirates team was shipped to Vietnam. He invited Dave, who reacted in his typical low-key style -- staying up all night filling and re-filling out the lineup card.

Thus began a career in which Houle was fast-tracked by his own persistence, bugging coaches for advice, scribbling observations in a notebook.

For his next gig as middle school football coach, he easily related to the players: Houle was in 10th grade, three years older than them. Once he reached college, he was appointed assistant football coach of the school team. At 23, he became the youngest head football coach among all Utah high schools.

"Someday," he had written in a journal around age 12, "I'm going to coach a state champion."

Houle check-marked that goal, one remarkably modest in retrospect, just three years out of college, winning in girls track and field. And they thought he was wacky as a high schooler when in one meet he competed in every event -- imagine a 120-pounder in the shot put -- as a learning experience.

The titles, accrued mostly at Mountain View High in Orem, generated their own momentum. He would coax the finer athletes off one of his teams to join another. Students with casual interest in a sport would try out, anticipating glory by the end of the season.

Houle remembers just missing out one year in girls cross country. "It haunted me for a long time," he says, guilt-ridden over letting the runners down.

After three state runner-up finishes in girls track, he took the basketball job in part to persuade two standouts to give track a try. They did and the Bruins' reign resumed.

Most years, Houle juggled five teams: both genders in cross-country and track, plus girls basketball. With one astonishing class, he accumulated a literal handful of rings, one for each finger and the thumb.

Houle claims no coaching secrets or ingenious insights. He follows principles popularized by esteemed mentors such as the late John Wooden, whom he befriended, emphasizing "do your best" over "be the best."

He has largely refrained from profanity since inviting his parents to a football game early on. Wearing a headset in the press box, he unwittingly cursed throughout, embarrassing Mom, who was within earshot.

He avoids playing favorites, once even cutting his lone daughter, then a senior, from a basketball team destined to dominate the state.

His recruiting trips took place in the school's hallways.

"My dad says I could sell ice to Eskimos," he says.

Or running to skiers. One girl misunderstood his sales pitch, thinking he coached cross-country skiing, but hung around nonetheless and excelled.

One year, the cross-country team photos bulged with the faces of 100 girls and 89 boys, even though only seven per side could compete in regional and state meets.

He is adaptable, illustrated by how he coped when the principal forced upon him the rare sport about which he knew little. Houle rounded up some wrestling buddies to teach the body lock and duck-under.

Not much turns the chatty Houle silent. One is the question: "Why be a round-the-calendar coach?"

He pauses, scratches his head and finally says, "I don't know. Every year, I'd tell my wife, ‘I don't know what it is.'"

His brothers, coaches all, have trimmed their load to a single sport. He quotes them as saying, "Dave, you're crazy. You're gonna have a heart attack."

Hearing them, Houle would pore over the list, wondering if he could forgo a team. He never found one.

An incident in late 2005 ultimately made the choice -- five times over -- for him.

On a road trip with the girls basketball team, Houle allowed two players to sleep overnight in his hotel room, which he vacated.

Other players had been ill, Houle said at the time, and the two feared staying in rooms with teammates.

The principal determined Houle had "violated the scope of his employment." The coach abruptly resigned, by mutual agreement.

"I've coached over 10,000 kids and I have no regrets," says Houle, who claimed the players' parents supported his handling of the situation. "Not one."

The departure, if inglorious, was somewhat welcomed by Houle. He was worn down by serious family matters, accusations of improper recruiting by some peers and the pressure to keep delivering titles, assembly-line style.

"People were saying, ‘Can you get to a hundred?'" he recalls.

"And I was tired of reading that I recruit. I can put my hand on the Bible and say I've never recruited. I've never been sanctioned or suspended for it."

Since, while relying on private sports tutoring for income, he worked briefly at another school and explored numerous openings. Seeking advice, he phoned Ingle, a fellow Utahan in the 1990s when he was as an assistant and interim head coach at Brigham Young.

Ingle mentioned an opening on his staff at Kennesaw. And so a 57-year-old is graduating from high school to college.

Ingle was not put off by the circumstances of Houle's departure from Mountain View.

"People I talked to spoke of his character," Ingle says. "And everything I heard was that there was so much jealousy" toward Houle in the school system.

Ingle also heard about a student in Houle's P.E. class who could not participate because his sneakers were stolen. The sympathetic coach, well-stocked with shoes supplied by Nike for his athletes, dug out a pair for the youngster, who happened to be Ingle's son.

Small world. And, now, a new world for the ring collector.