Charlie Houghton is a complicated guy. One of those soft-spoken, deep-thinking types who doesn’t say much. Carefully crafting every thought and phrase, he’s even-keeled, setting his own pace. His feet, on the other hand, are usually moving much faster than his mouth.
As the returning Patriot League Rookie of the Year, the sophomore running back, who runs a 4.4 second forty-yard dash, has a lot on his mind. The first Hoya player to ever win a major Patriot League award, he’ll be carrying much of the load for the Georgetown offense as they try to improve upon last year’s 2-9 record, which featured no Patriot League wins.
Even with returning offensive starters like senior quarterback and captain Matt Bassuener and last year’s leading receiver, senior Brent Craft, Houghton figures to be cradling Georgetown’s hopes with each carry he gets. “You never know if someone gets an award or something, they could have a different demeanor, like now they’re owed something,” Bassuener said. “But Charlie has been great about putting in extra work with us and putting in extra time in the weight room. He just really wants to be out there and on every carry he’s trying to take it to the house. You can just tell he’s really hungry.”
One would think that after digesting eight meals a day for an entire summer back at home in Toronto, there would be no room for any kind of hunger. But for the second-year sensation’who’s already seeing limited action in practice scrimmages to keep him healthy’it’s all part of the plan. The 4,000 calorie-a-day diet and a steady weight-lifting routine has Houghton tipping the scales at around 210 pounds. More chicken-and-egg-white omelets than Canadian bacon, he’s sporting less than 5 percent body fat. “It’s amazing what he’s done physically in the last year to get himself ready,” said second year head coach Kevin Kelly. “The sky’s the limit for him. I think he’s the best back in the league. He’s going to run the ball. We’d be fools if we didn’t have him do that.”
A finance major who worked as an analyst at the Bank of Nova Scotia this past summer, Houghton divided his time between crunching numbers and running sprints. Definitely a meat-head with a one-track football mind, he’s smart enough to know he can’t win games in one of Division I-AA’s toughest conferences on his own.
Bassuener has been labeled every smarty-pants nickname in the book’cerebral, heady, analytical, you name it. But it’s with good reason. He’s a mainstay on the Multi-Sport field after practices, working with his receivers on timing patterns until the sun goes down. With almost a full season of starts under his belt and no lingering quarterback controversy to distract him, he’ll be able to use that brain of his’which earned him a spot as one of Georgetown’s few varsity athletes in the School of Foreign Service’to manage his team to victory.
Craft and senior fullback and captain Kyle Van Fleet will be rounding out most of the team’s touches on the offensive side of the ball, with Georgetown track-and-field star Kenny Mitchell working his way into the mix for an offensive spark.
Defensively, the Hoyas took a huge hit when they lost Alex Buzbee to graduation. He’s now trying to work his way onto another D.C.-based squad’the Washington Redskins. But the Hoyas are ready to move on without him, and watch from their living room couches instead of from the sidelines as he makes tackles.
Senior captains Nnamdi Obiako and Stephen Smith will anchor the team’s front seven while seniors Kevin Cherepski and Matt Barbiaz will roam the secondary. In all, nine seniors should be seeing significant time on the defensive side. “We did lose some players, but I think overall we’ll be better,” Kelly said. “A lot of our younger guys are bigger, faster, stronger and have started to make some jumps. This year we’ll be a little more seasoned overall than we were last year.”
Though the team features bright spots of hope, expectations are not too high for the Hoyas, especially after last season’s showing. “It’s great to be back at camp and seeing all the upperclassmen and how they work,” Houghton said. “I’ve been studying a lot and training really hard, but I’m trying to make everyone around me better too, especially the younger guys. I just want help them figure out what they need to do.”
A freshman not too long ago himself, Houghton knows all about the adjustment period. Coming from Toronto with little more than his death-metal music posters (his favorite band is Hate Eternal), he had to adjust to a new country, a new school and a new team. After a few months, he certainly found his niche. He averaged 82.3 yards per game and won Patriot Rookie of the Week honors three of the last four weeks of the season.
Since then, he’s fit in just fine as a typical, Canadian-born, eight-meal-a-day eating, number-crunching, 4.4 40-yard-dash-running teammate. And as long as he can play up to the hype, the talented Mr. Houghton can march to the beat of his own, death-metal drummer all he wants.
