The Ultimate Teacher

Youngsters gain an awareness of their surroundings and an understanding of their life situations at different points in their childhoods. Grow up in the projects in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, as Armond Hill did with his parents and five siblings, and reality sets in a little more quickly.

In fifth or sixth grade, Hill began to play basketball for the first time, with the same dreams of any other youngster. The point in his life when he picked up the game is trivial, and he cannot recall the exact moment. However, the reason he stepped onto the court for the first time, and the reason why he traveled around the five boroughs of New York City looking for a game, is remembered clearly.

"I thought [basketball] would be something I could do to go to college because I knew my family couldn't pay for it," remembers Hill.

Now that's reality, and Hill's drive and work ethic never allowed him to sway from his goal. That generic and so often misused phrase - work ethic - is one that everyone who knows Hill applies to him. The difference is that there is no better model of the phrase, except perhaps the people who gave it to him.

Ask him where he got the ability to work so hard towards his passions in life, and the answer is a no-brainer. As a child, Hill awoke each morning and watched his father have breakfast with the family, then go to his job as a presser at a local dry cleaners. At six o'clock sharp, after putting in eight hours at the dry cleaners while young Armond and his siblings were spending their time in school, Hill's father returned home to take a breather, get a bite to eat, spend some time with his family, and then get back on the road, this time to Con-Edison for another eight-hour shift until the cycle began all over again the next day. Meanwhile, his mother was busy taking care of six children in the small apartment, allowing his life to run smoothly so that he could enjoy the benefits of childhood.

Watching both of his parents work so hard to put food on the table and provide shelter for the family, without complaining, it shouldn't be a surprise that Armond stayed on task, focused on his goal of college. Really, in his mind, there was never an option, never a desire to fall into the web of misbehaving and violence.

"If you know anything about Armond," says Pete Carril, the man who would recruit Hill to Princeton, "you know that all of the Hill children went to college and that his parents stressed education in the family."

For Hill, only one passion would rise to a level equal to his desire to play basketball, and it remains with him today. About the same time he began to make his mark on the basketball courts of Brooklyn, Hill discovered that his mind allowed him to be creative through another medium - art.

"One of my older brothers was an artist," remembers Hill, "and it always intrigued me how he could create things with paint, with a pen, with charcoal, with a pencil. He was creative, and I loved being creative on the basketball court."

So, Hill took up art with the same passion that he applied to his basketball game. In seventh grade, he entered a drawing of an Oriental landscape in a local contest and won a summer art scholarship to the Brooklyn Arts Museum. His success in art meant Hill was faced with a dilemma spend the summer inside studying at the museum or outside playing basketball with his friends. With the blessing of his parents, Hill chose to remain with his "pack" of friends, traveling around New York City to look for a game. Art could wait, but he promised himself that he would never lose his love for or commitment to it.

Discipline, thought and hard work were three necessities for Hill in both art and basketball, and the three qualities became cornerstones of his personality as the lanky youngster blossomed into a two-time all-American at Bishop Ford High School. He was tall - 6-feet, 4-inches to be exact - and he played the point guard position with a smooth, precise ability at a time when it was not fashionable to have taller point guards. Highly sought after by top college programs nationwide, Hill spurned the tantalizing prospect of a full-ride scholarship in order to attend Princeton. For the Bed-Stuy native, the choice was simple.

"I was either going to play big-time basketball at a place like Notre Dame, Maryland or Louisville, or I was going to go to a school that was going to challenge me academically," said Hill. "Growing up with a mother and father and a family where education was important to us, I knew that I couldn't play basketball forever. I didn't really know anything about Princeton, I just knew [my family] wanted me to get an education."

A consistent theme runs through Hill's life, and you begin to understand it as he talks about his decision to attend Princeton. Appearances don't matter to the man; he knows what he is doing and he follows his instincts. People thought he was crazy when he turned down a scholarship and the prospect of big-time basketball in favor of a better education. You can get an education anywhere, Hill was chided by his friends, why pay for it if you don't have to?

More than anything else, it was Carril who brought Hill to Princeton.

"People don't understand that I went to Princeton because of coach Carril," said Hill. "I didn't go to Princeton just because of Princeton. I went to Princeton because I respected what they had to offer at the school and I also went because I fell in love with [Carril] and he recruited me and told me all of the things I was doing wrong and all of the things he could help me with. As a youngster growing up in Brooklyn, you really just want someone to be honest with you, and he was really the first guy that I thought, as a coach, was honest with me."

The path to Princeton, however, was not without its bumps and obstacles. Midway through his senior year in high school, with scholarship offers still hovering over him, Hill was rejected from Princeton. While the stinging decision not to admit Hill could have led a different individual to change his mind and accept a scholarship from another school, the thought never entered Hill's mind. Instead of moving directly to another college, Hill took Carril's advice and chose to attend Lawrenceville Prep School for a postgraduate year to prove to the Princeton admissions office that he could comply with the academic rigors at a place like Princeton.

"My friends didn't understand," remembers Hill. "They thought I was crazy when I told them I was going to Lawrenceville. They asked me, 'well, is that a junior college?'"

Lawrenceville provided Hill with an invaluable experience. He learned how to manage his time and to think and write at a higher level. Certainly, the year was a self-described "culture shock" for the young man who had not spent a great deal of time outside of the familiar confines of Brooklyn. Most of the other students at Lawrenceville were more fortunate than Hill, but he did not let the differences bother him in the least. As Hill said, "[y]ou're now surrounded by kids who are more fortunate than you are, but they have the same fears of any kid."

Moreover, Hill felt extremely fortunate himself to be a part of the vaunted prep school. Consider the manner in which Hill recalls his lodgings for the first half of the school year, as he displays his tremendous ability to turn what could be a negative situation into one that seems fortuitous.

"They didn't have any rooms left when I got to Lawrenceville, so they put me in the infirmary. I kind of thought I'd made out because at night we had cookies and milk. I mean, my room was always clean and the bed was made every day, I kind of liked it. To go back at night after studying and to have cookies and milk, I was living large."

There it is again, that underlying theme making its way through Armond's life, exhibited by a genuine combination of acceptance and humility that is rare in an individual. "He had that thing to draw people towards him," Carril tries to explain, not sure how to put into words the silent, emotional impact a unique person can have on others. At Lawrenceville, "that thing" allowed him to become friends with other students and faculty rather than worry about being less fortunate, and "that thing" allowed him to put a positive spin on sleeping for more than six months on a hospital bed.

"That thing" also helped him remain loyal to Princeton, despite continued scholarship offers, and after he was accepted by the school the following spring, he enrolled in the fall of 1972. After a season of freshman basketball, Hill returned to Princeton for his sophomore year, eager to join the varsity. His work ethic towards academics relaxed ever so slightly, however, and Hill flunked out of school.

"I don't blame anybody but myself," Hill said. "I didn't do the work."

The setback put the entire recruiting process in motion for the third time as the same schools called yet again to pester the youngster, but his loyalty and his inability to quit what he had begun guaranteed his return to Princeton.

Hill spent the required year away from school working at a radio station in the area, returning to Princeton for the 1974-75 school year with a vengeance. During that year, Hill was an integral part of a Tiger squad that is remembered for two reasons. First, Princeton held on to beat a highly-rated Virginia team in Charlottesville in a game that Carril, ejected for arguing with the officials with 19:34 remaining in the second half and no assistant coaches on the bench, recalls as the "highlight" of his career. According to Gary Walters, the current Princeton athletic director and an assistant to Carril at the time who was in Kentucky recruiting during the game, the win against Virginia propelled the Tigers into the NIT Tournament. The 1975 NIT is the second reason why this particular Princeton team is remembered, as the Tigers would go on to win the tournament.

"I still wear the [first-place] watch today," remembers Hill. "I like it because on the back of it, it says 'winner,' and I know what we had to do to win. It was a total team effort, we were all focused on the challenge that was ahead of us, and we were taught well by Coach Carril."

The following season brought both team and individual accolades for Hill, as he led the League champions in scoring, assists and steals in becoming the first Princeton player to win the Ivy League Player of the Year award (established in 1975).

Then the call came. Hill had been chosen by the Atlanta Hawks with the ninth pick in the 1976 NBA draft. For the two-time high school all-American who had been recruited by many a scholarship school, for the two-year Princeton captain who had helped lead his team to the 1975 NIT Championship, this was the pinnacle, this was the evidence that the dream of professional basketball had become a reality.

"Hey, I'm one of the top-10 players in America," Hill remembered thinking as his name was announced. The kid from Bed-Stuy had made it to the big show.

What was your first contract for, he was asked recently, and his response is uncertain. Four years, he thinks, but the length or the dollar amount isn't what he remembers from that moment when he placed his signature on the dotted line. "I was just happy that I got to play with the best players in the world," he recalls fondly. "I just wanted to get on the court with them. I was in awe the first year because I got to go against Frazier, Monroe, Havlicek, Kareem, all of these guys that I grew up watching, and all of them were just what I pictured. They were just great players."

For that first year, Hill would be overwhelmed occasionally among the greats. Several times during the season, Hawks coach Hubie Brown would ask the rookie "what in the hell" he was doing on defense. Hill would respond, in an almost matter-of-fact, yet dreamy manner, that he was simply staring at the stars on the floor. He didn't mean to say he was playing passively, just that the esteem in which he held certain players would overcome him periodically. Brown then would retort, "yeah, but they're not supposed to score on you," and Hill would snap back into the flow of the game.

Hill spent the next eight years playing for four teams in the NBA, including two tours of duty in Atlanta. After playing 15 games for Atlanta during the 1983-84 season, Hill decided to begin life after basketball.

Life after basketball: one step at a time. It should come as no surprise where Hill's values steered him.

"The first thing I did was return to Princeton," said Hill, "the very first thing. I hung up my sneakers and I called the admissions office and applied for readmission. They accepted me, and they said, 'well, you can't get any financial aid this time!'"

Try returning to college nearly a decade after you last picked up a book where you had to study, had to prepare for an exam, had to write a research paper. It's not so easy, and your teachers don't care how many years you spent in the NBA, or which superstars you played against. But for Hill, the year was somewhat refreshing and provided him a bit of relief from life on the road in professional basketball.

"It was actually the toughest year of school I ever had," he remembers with a grimace. "When you're on the road and you pick up a book to read, you're reading it for your enjoyment. But now, when I went back to school, I had to read and try to remember. I had to write my thesis, and that was tough.

"But it was also one of the best times because I could be a student. For the first time ever, I didn't have to go to the gym, and so when classes ended, I went right to the library, went and sat in the chapel to enjoy the free time, listened to the guy play the organ. There were experiences there that I hadn't had a chance to do when I was younger."

After completing his bachelor's degree in psychology, Hill received a telephone call from Jim Waugh, the head men's basketball coach at Lawrenceville. Waugh asked if Hill would be interested in a dual position as the curator of the Lawrenceville Art Museum and assistant basketball coach. The man who picked up the phone had never considered a career in coaching and was looking to move on from basketball. But Waugh convinced him that working with the Lawrenceville students on the basketball floor would be about teaching, not just basketball, and the possibility intrigued the new college graduate. Plus, the position would give Hill the opportunity to remain involved with art, for the NBA player had not changed from the youngster who had promised never to relinquish his love of art. Hill hung up the phone having accepted the position.

After six years at Lawrenceville, Hill received a telephone call from Carril. There was an opening on the Princeton staff, and the teacher wanted to know if his protg was interested. It was a "no-brainer" to Hill, who had discovered he loved the teaching aspect of being a coach. Waugh was right. This wasn't about basketball, it was about teaching young men about life. It was about being honest with them, as Carril had been with the scared yet determined Bed-Stuy native nearly 20 years before.

In the spring of 1995, with four years of experience under his belt as an assistant at Princeton, Hill was selected to be the 20th head basketball coach at Columbia University. It was the natural progression for the man. A head position after years as an assistant. A return home to New York City. A chance to revive a program.

Spend some time with Hill and you learn a great deal about the man. As current Princeton head coach Bill Carmody, who was Hill's fellow assistant at Princeton, says, "[a]s great a player as he was, he's just a much better guy." He has a unique ability to look beyond simple outward appearance and consider the individual aspects of a person himself. You see it in the way he lives his life.

Ask him about his year of graduation from Princeton, which he lists as 1985. He is asked and teased often about the nine-year gap from when he first left school to when he returned after his NBA career, but he considers that final year to be the toughest, the one during which he learned so much. But why not put the year he left Princeton; he has the degree now anyway, so why does it matter? Well, to put 1976 would be a slight to the total experience.

Ask him where his diploma is and he'll tell you he doesn't know. He knows he has it, but the education it represents isn't going anywhere even if the piece of paper may not hang on his wall.

Ask him about a class ring. He says, with a chuckle, that his mother offered him money in 1985 to buy a ring, but he declined. "It would have been nice, but I know the experience," he says as he points to his head.

Ask him about what he did at the radio station during his year away from Princeton. He mentions doing some research for a project to celebrate 100 black athletes. His work helped to create a record, narrated by the venerable Curt Gowdy. Ask him if he has the record today, and he is positive that he does. Somewhere. "Again, I don't know where it is," he says, "but I've got it. It's very important to me."

All along, he is speaking quietly, his voice so soft that you have to lean forward to catch all of his words. You can sense his passions, the fire in his eyes when he talks about his life growing up, the admiration in his voice for important figures in his life like Carril and Waugh, his esteem for art and the people who create such beautiful things.

You ask a question about whether he is enjoying himself as a coach, a job in which he admits he never saw himself. Then the phone rings in his Columbia office, a space that he mentions as being larger than the bedroom he shared with his three brothers growing up. Suddenly, a big smile appears, his voice rises in joy, and nothing else seems to matter.

"Are you trying to make my day?" he asks the caller. "Well, you just did. I got a big smile on my face, man. Oh man, this is a great day."

You soon will learn that the caller is a former player on the junior varsity team that Hill coached at Princeton. A now-friend whom Hill taught the same way Carril taught him. Hill hangs up the phone, and in the middle of a difficult rebuilding process at Columbia, he is able to look beyond the win-loss total for a moment to reflect on his mission as a head coach.

"If you get a call like I got today," he says, "it makes it all worthwhile. Here's a guy who I think is a terrific young man, who played for me on my JV team, and he thinks enough of me to call and we're going to get together have lunch and talk, and it's about life. So yeah, I'm enjoying what I'm doing."

The student who struggled all that time to learn has become the best teacher a youngster could ever hope to have.

-- Dan Rosenthal

***Please note, this story was written for a previous Ivy League Black History Month celebration. It is reproduced here for archival purposes and has not been updated.***