New Field, New Goals for Kicker

Iowa has reason to be proud. The greatest players from Iowa’s last Rose Bowl team have gone on to even greater things. Chuck Long is a quarterback for the Rams. Ronnie Harmon is a running back for the Chargers.

And Rob Houghtlin coaches St. Mary’s Quadzilla, a championship rugby team.

For quadriplegics.

It should come as no surprise that Houghtlin is doing something so worthwhile with his free time and with his life. Even while he was still at Iowa, he won college football’s Leadership Award, honoring the player who did the most to exemplify leadership and character.

Houghtlin kicked two field goals in the 1986 Rose Bowl game, won by UCLA, 45-28. The second one flew 52 yards, and nobody in the long history of this bowl game has ever kicked one longer.

For a living, Houghtlin is an account manager in the San Francisco branch office of U.S. News and World Report magazine. In his spare hours, he is volunteer coach of a wheelchair rugby team sponsored by St. Mary’s Hospital of San Francisco, a group of 15 young adults, three of whom are women, most of whom have been involved in accidents that left them with severe spinal-cord injury or total paralysis.

Rob doesn’t do it for money or glory or publicity or anything else, and doesn’t consider himself some sort of pious, corny-as-Iowa do-gooder whose mission in life is to go around helping the unfortunate.

“I do it because it’s rewarding in a selfish way,” he said. “Because it makes me feel good.

“Look, I figure we’ve all been blessed with the opportunity to live this life of ours, and if you don’t give something back, I think you’re just being a mope.”

Most of the players have at least partial use of their arms. They supply their own wheelchairs and compete in a coast-to-coast league that will take them to Toronto for a 10-team tournament next month and possibly to the nationals in Tampa, Fla., later in 1991. Houghtlin’s team won last year’s national championship.

Rugby is a rugged game, not for the weak or meek. But the St. Mary’s players wouldn’t have it any other way. Many is the time Houghtlin has seen one of his players pitch forward onto the hard floor of the gymnasium where they play, opening gashes on their heads.

“You know the sport’s motto: ‘Donate Blood, Play Rugby,”’ Houghtlin said. “These people play the game seriously. I could put the best athletes from a National Football League team in chairs against them and the NFL guys wouldn’t have a prayer.”

Houghtlin himself had a cup of Gatorade with the NFL, spending time in the camps of the Chicago Bears and Atlanta Falcons after college. When that didn’t pan out, he got on with his life, got a job, got married, and a child is due in the spring.

His friend from Athletes in Action days, UCLA basketball assistant coach Mark Gottfried, had a paralyzed friend who played for the St. Mary’s team. The team needed a coach, somebody to donate not blood, but time.

Some of the Quadzilla’s players were former athletes, with whom Houghtlin could identify. Brian Hansen, for example, played lacrosse for Ohio State.

“One day a fight breaks out on the field, and Brian runs over to play peacemaker,” Houghtlin said. “Somebody picks him up, throws him down, he lands on his head, and that’s that. Paralyzed. That’s how fast it can happen, how fast somebody’s whole life can change.”

In the indoor game, the quadriplegic players have to carry the rugby ball across a goal line 22 feet long. They do not, as in traditional rugby, have to spike the ball to complete the score.

Houghtlin enjoys watching them play and appreciates their skill. He roots for them, same way he will be rooting for Iowa’s Hawkeyes--one in particular--on New Year’s Day.

“I’d like to see their kicker, Jeff Skillett, break my field-goal record,” Houghtlin said.

We are not exactly discussing the most selfish man in California here.