Mission First 2016

MISSION FIRST

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PROFILES OF ARMY WEST POINT ATHLETICS 2016

Edited By: Bob Beretta

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PRODUCED BY: The Army Athletic Association

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

Previous Editions

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Introduction

by Boo Corrigan

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Foreward

by Bob Beretta

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Col. Jim Barren “One Team, One Fight”

by Harrison Antognioni

12 Lt. Col. Dave Borowicz

“King Of The Hill”

by Steve Waldman 16 Mark Clouse

“Filling His Role”

by John Feinstein 20 Lt. Col. Liam Collins

“Under The Wire”

by Matt Faulkner 24 Julie Del Giorno

“Making A Difference”

by Mike Vaccaro 28 Joe DePinto

“The Servant-Leader”

by Matt Faulkner

32 Col. Rob Dickerson

“Back Where It All Began”

by Harrison Antognioni

64 Chris Perry

“The Answer Man”

by Mady Salvani

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68 Kim and Josh Sembrano

“A Tie That Bonds”

by Ally Keirn

2nd Lt. Vanessa Edwards “Mother And Daughter In Arms”

by Ally Keirn

40 2nd Lt. Jesse Glenn

“Setting The Bar High”

by Harrison Antognioni 44 Shane Kimbrough

“Man On A Mission”

by Kevin Gleason 48 Mike Krzyzewski

“No Excuses”

by John Feinstein 52 2nd Lt. Max Lenox

“Leading From The Front”

by Kevin Gleason 56 2nd Lt. Kelsey Minato

“One Of A Kind”

by Wayne Coffey

72 Doug Van Everen

“An Icon In His Field”

by Mady Salvani 76 Acknowledgements 78 Dedication ★★★ Please visit the Army West Point Athletics YouTube page at youtube.com/goarmywestpoint for bonus video interview content from each of the subjects featured in this year’s edition of “Mission First.” This will allow you to hear the voices, see the facial expressions and feel the passion of our subjects as they discuss a myriad of topics related to this way of life we call, “Mission First.”

60 Maj. Chrissy O’Hara

“Rolling With The Punches”

by Ally Keirn “Mission First” was printed by APM Graphics.

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Previous Editions

“Mission First” debuted in the summer of 2013 and featured 19 profile stories. The subjects of those stories are listed below:

★ Paige Brink ★

★ 1st Lt. Erin Anthony ★

★ Peter Carey ★

★ Andrew Avelino ★

★ Dick Edell ★

★ Herman Bulls ★

★ Rich Ellerson ★

★ Maj. Ashlie Christian ★

★ Dr. Barney Forsythe ★

★ Dan Christman ★

★ Lt. Col. Gaylord Greene ★

★ 2nd Lt. Lindsey Danilack ★

★ Dick Hall ★

★ Col. Greg Gadson ★

★ Kate, John, Rick and Annie Houghton ★

★ Becky Halstead ★

★ CW5 Dan and Jane Jollota ★

★ William “Chico” Hurtado ★

★ Capt. Liz Lazarri ★

★ Sam Lessey ★

★ Elizabeth LoRusso ★

★ Lichtenberg Family ★

★ Lt. Col. Jennifer (Johnston) McAfee ★

★ Dave Magarity ★

★ Jack, Rob and Brian Riley ★

★ Bob Novogratz ★

★ Gen. David Rodriguez ★

★ Mady Salvani ★

★ Larraine Saavedra ★

★ Rollie Stichweh ★

★ Gary Steele ★

★ Trainor Family ★

★ Carl Ullrich ★ ★ Haley (Edwards) Uthlaut ★ 4

The second edition of “Mission First” was released in the summer of 2014 and featured 16 profile stories. The subjects of those stories are listed below:

★ Lt. Col. Myreon Williams ★

Previous Editions

The third edition of “Mission First” was released in the summer of 2015 and featured 16 profile stories. The subjects of those stories are listed below:

★ Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III ★ ★ Lt. Gen. Robert Brown ★ ★ 2nd Lt. Larry Dixon ★ ★ 2nd Lt. Dion Hart ★ ★ Kevin Houston ★ ★ Charlie Jarvis ★ ★ Col. Nick Mauldin ★ ★ Maj. Anne McClain ★ ★ Dr. Rebecca (Marier) McGuigan ★ ★ Tom and 2nd Lt. Jasmine Morgan ★ ★ Maj. Steve Reich ★ ★ Ben Russell ★ ★ Schretzman Family ★ ★ 2nd Lt. Katlin VanWye ★

★ Jimmy Wallace ★

Previous editions of “Mission First” are available to view online at GoArmyWestPoint.com.

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★ Mike Viti ★

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Introduction

My family arrived at West Point in 2011 and in the past six years we have cherished every moment and each day we’re reminded that this is a very special place. I take pride in being a part of the world’s premier leadership institution and will always abide by the ideals of Duty, Honor, Country. In addition to our success in the athletic arena, we are responsible for helping guide young men and women to become leaders of character.

The goal of the athletic department is to provide an extraordinary athletic experience to all our cadetathletes, but also the entire community that makes up West Point both home and abroad. I continue to be amazed at what happens on a daily basis and a lot of those encounters are contained within these hallowed walls.

The 2015-16 year was one to remember with team, class and individual milestones. We hosted playoff games in all three winter sports for the first time in Academy history and the women’s basketball seniors capped off their four years with 99 wins and two conference titles after winning the Patriot League championship in 2016.

Men’s tennis, gymnastics, women’s rugby and golf, all claimed conference titles, while sprint football captured another world title.

This year was particularly special with many individual performances as well as team achievements.

Kelsey Minato finished as the Patriot League’s all-time leading scorer on the hardwood, Kasey McCravey’s accomplishments on the diamond as Patriot League Player of the Year and Jesse Glenn becoming the first Army gymnast to take home the nation’s top gymnastic honor, the Nissen-Emery Award.

We continue to upgrade our tremendous facilities thanks to the generosity of our donors. In addition to the renovations, we have added the impressive Foley, Enners, Nathe, Lacrosse Center, which will benefit the cadet-athletes of our men’s and women’s lacrosse teams immensely and provide top-level locker rooms and training facilities. Clinton Field is adding a new press box and seating for fans, while Gillis Field House got a facelift with bleachers for volleyball matches.

In this most recent edition of “Mission First,” we profiled a combination of 17 graduates, co-workers and current cadet-athletes that share the values of West Point. They each have a unique story to tell about their experiences of this great community and how it shaped who they are today.

Those profiled in this book include a three-time Olympic gold-winning coach, an astronaut, a Special Forces soldier, recent graduates and those who have gone onto lead their respective industries. Each one will tell you that their successes are traced back to what this institution did for them and what it means to be a graduate.

This was our fourth edition of this publication and each year, this book tells a different story. We hope it finds a special place within your home as the ones profiled have always put the mission before all else.

Go Army!

Eugene F. Corrigan Jr. Director of Athletics

Foreward

It’s hard to believe but we are four years into this initiative we call “Mission First.”

Four years and more than 60 personality profiles later, it feels as though we have accomplished our goal of shining a spotlight on some very special individuals connected to the United States Military Academy and the West Point way of life.

We’ve done it through the written word, through wonderfully told “Mission First” stories written by gifted authors, and we’ve done it by providing the subjects their own voice in the complimentary video pieces offered the past few years.

“Mission First” debuted in the fall of 2013 and we have followed now with three brilliant editions that have been extremely well received. Through it all, the common thread has been West Point.

It’s the people that make West Point such a special place and those same people that we spotlighted in these pages the past several years. These people are dedicated to the concept of selfless service, consistently committed to placing the mission above all else.

In conjunction with this printed version of the book, we ask you to visit the Army West Point Athletics You Tube page at youtube.com/GoArmyWestPoint for bonus video interview content from each off the subjects featured in this year’s edition of “Mission First.” Once again, this will allow you to hear the voices, see the facial expressions and feel the spirit of our subjects as they discuss a wide range of topics related to their selfless lifestyle.

We hope you enjoy the fourth edition of “Mission First” and value the publication for what it most represents.

Goodness in all forms.

Every day, in every way.

With West Point serving as the common thread woven through the fabric of all.

by Bob Beretta Executive Athletic Director

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Col. Jim Barren ★ ONE TEAM, ONE FIGHT BY harrison antognioni

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“One Team, One Fight” is a principle Col. Jim Barren has adopted during his 27 years in the United States Army. More than a simple motto or saying, “One Team, One Fight” has become a way of life for the man who serves as the G-3, or Operations Officer, at the United States Military Academy.

“That’s the mantra we kind of have for the team in the G-3 shop,” Barren says. “Everybody who works here and performs, from cadets to military police to professors to people who mentor the cadets, we’re all on the same team. Our endeavors are unique to our particular organization, but they all have to fit together and we all have to be mutually supportive of each other.”

Barren graduated from West Point in 1989 before returning to the Academy in the summer of 2014 to begin his current position on Superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr.’s staff.

Barren manages the Academy’s master calendar and is responsible for the overall coordination and synchronization of all of the events that take place at West Point over the course of the year. He oversees a staff of 15 in the G-3 department.

As a cadet, Barren took strongly to the values associated with West Point and the Army, but it was only until after he started at the Academy that he could appreciate all that West Point was about.

He became the first person in his family to attend the United States Military Academy when he came to West Point in the summer of 1985 and while his family was excited for his opportunity, Barren admits to not fully knowing what a future career in the Army would entail.

“I didn’t really know what the Army was when I came to West Point, but West Point helped me find my profession, because it is a team,” Barren reflects. “What caused me to stay in the Army after coming to a place where I really didn’t know much, were the teams. I knew what teams were. Everything you do in the Army is about teamwork.

“A big part of being a member of a team and coming here and the profession that I’m going to be in is all about being a team and being a leader. That resonated with me and motivated me in my younger years in the Army and then as I moved on, I really enjoyed being a member of this great team.”

Along with leadership, values such as personal courage, selfless service and doing the right thing when no one is looking were adages Barren embraced and practiced during his years at the Academy.

“There are so many things that you never really hear or experience until you come here as an 18-year old kid,” Barren says. “Things like selfless service and doing the right thing when nobody’s looking, which to me is what discipline is. You never walk past something that is substandard, because if you do, then you have established a new standard that is substandard. All those little things have become second nature for me and they were instilled in me here.”

Another value that stuck with Barren early in his life was teamwork. While

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ West Point further strengthened the importance of teamwork, it was playing team sports that introduced Barren to the concept of working together to accomplish a goal. ★★★ Athletics held importance in Barren’s life from a young age. Growing up in Steubenville, Ohio, he participated in a number of team sports, including football.

Barren remembers the lessons he learned from playing team sports as a kid, but specifically points to the values of working together and selflessness as having the largest impact on the direction his life would ultimately go.

“I only played team sports so the thing that I think most impressed me was the fact that one gifted person couldn’t do all the work,” Barren says. “My high school football coach left an indelible mark on me that if you work hard as a team, you can be successful because you are only as strong as your weakest link. Everybody has to work hard and work together. You had to have a team, with all members knowing their responsibilities, and everyone trusting each other to be successful.”

Barren’s football team at Steubenville High School won a state

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championship during his senior season before joining the Army football team a year later as a scoutteam linebacker.

Even without playing in a game as a freshman, Barren continued to see the values of teamwork in action and took pride in his role of supporting his teammates from the sideline. The 1985 Army football team went 9-3 and finished the year with a 31-29 victory over Illinois in the Peach Bowl.

During spring practice at the end of his Plebe year, Barren experienced at injury that caused him to sit out for a significant portion of the spring and wasn’t able to have the impact he wanted because of it.

“When the names were listed for summer ball, I was not on that list, so I was identified as one of the guys that got cut,” Barren says. “I can live with that because I gave it my all.

“I do not like to refer to myself as a West Point football player as

I was only a member of the team, scout team at that, for one full year,” Barren continues. “But it did give me a great respect for what goes on in all of the corps squad athletics here and I know it’s only become more and more demanding.”

After graduating in the spring of 1989, Barren began his career as a second lieutenant in the Army’s Field Artillery Branch. He served as an Executive Officer for a Field Artillery battery and was tasked with leading non-commissioned officers who were 10 or more years older.

“One thing that I always go back to that was instilled in me here is, whatever mission or task you’re given, you try to become the subject matter expert on it,” Barren says. “Good things come to those who work hard and extra time is put in. From that extra time, you become a subject matter expert in different endeavors and that draws respect without you having to do

anything other than demonstrate that you understand what’s going on, what’s required and that you can take a task that’s given to you and translate that and interpret that.

Your expertise in your profession enables you to garner respect to lead folks. All of that ties back to different experiences I had at the Academy.”

Barren worked a series of other positions as his career in the Army progressed. He served as a Brigade Fire Support Office in Kuwait and Iraq, as a Battalion Commander in Iraq and as an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Chief of Current Plans in Afghanistan, to name a few.

His current position in the G-3 department came as his first job at the Academy, and his first longterm return to his alma mater since graduating, after only making a handful of brief trips back to West Point before 2014.

When asked about what makes him most proud of serving in the Army for 27 years, Barren comes back to the values he learned at West Point during the late 1980s. For Barren, it all comes back to seeing the successes of those he’s worked with and continuing to be a part of the team that has spanned his entire professional career.

“The greatest thing is being

able to promote somebody, that’s a thrill and an honor for me,” Barren says. “Maybe I had one hundredth of one percent of an impact on something they did. As I go back over the years, the thing that makes me the proudest is seeing the success of those that I’ve had the privilege to lead.

“That and being a part of a team, and hopefully being able to contribute to those teams. In the Army, we are one team all the time.

That’s kept me going all these years and continues to keep me going.”

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Lt. Col. Dave Borowicz ★ KING OF THE HILL BY steve waldman

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For most, the term family is associated with your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. A select few, however, have the opportunity to endure the 47-month process that is the United States Military Academy, and spending countless hours at Doubleday Field to become a member of the Army Baseball Family.

Such is the case for Lt. Col. Dave Borowicz, who has been directly associated with the baseball program at West Point across four decades.

Borowicz was a highly-touted pitching prospect coming out of high school in the late 1980s and caught the attention of numerous Division I programs. After having his mind all-but-made-up on what his collegiate plans were going to be, a final trip to West Point flipped the script for the 18-year-old right hander.

“I had been recruited by Army, Air Force, Dartmouth, Purdue and Minnesota, and West Point was actually my last visit,” says Borowicz. “I was pretty much all set to walk on at Purdue, but coming here changed my mind.”

Borowicz was sold on West Point when he stepped on campus for the first time.

He was in awe of the tradition, but more importantly, he mentioned that it was the people he met, especially future teammate Shannon Smith (USMA ’90).

“Smith’s frankness and his work ethic were infectious and everything he stood for made me want to be a part of it,” Borowicz adds. “I knew I would have an opportunity to play and contribute, and, as it turns out, I ended up pitching as a reliever during my freshman year and worked my way into the starting rotation my final three years.”

In his career with the Black Knights, Borowicz made significant contributions to the baseball program. As a freshman, the Milwaukee, Wis., native was credited with a save against Long Island University for the 1,000th win in Army program history. He would go on to be named team captain, in addition to being a Rhodes Scholar candidate, as a First Classman. Since his graduation in 1992, Borowicz noted that the Army Baseball Family has grown not only in number, but also in the level of involvement of those who are not players and coaches.

“The Army Baseball Family really has blossomed since I was a player,” Borowicz expresses. “When I was a player, we were tight. We were close-knit, but it was just the team. Now, it’s really expanded to include the team, the parents and the alumni.

It has really grown into something that provides an amazing support structure for today’s players.”

Borowicz states that the opportunity that the team is given these days is different from when he played.

“It’s larger and more formalized than when I played,” he adds. “I think it helps in

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ a couple ways by giving the current group of players the resources and support they need to complete their 47-month experience here. They have the ability to go and talk to people who have gone before them and see some of the feelings that they’re having, whether it be on the baseball field, in the classroom or general cadet life.”

The support system provided to these players by the Army Baseball Family allows them to recognize that they are a part of something that is much bigger than themselves.

While the former players provide aid to a situation the current cadetathletes may experience while at the Academy, they also show the cadets what they will experience in the future during their military commitment.

One of the most impactful moments for the team and Borowicz came in the midst of the 2013 Patriot League Tournament.

Borowicz was alerted he was being deployed to Afghanistan midway through the season.

After making it known to the

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team, Army went on to win all four of its Patriot League Tournament games en route to claiming the conference championship. The Black Knights swept Navy in the semifinals and Holy Cross in the finals.

For most of the Army players, it was the first time someone so close to them was being deployed; it became real. Borowicz noted that a special moment for him was how close the players remained to the rest of his family.

“What was very special was the way those guys on the 2013 team stepped up to stay personally involved with my family,” Borowicz says. “My son Josh had 35 big brothers who were there to make sure he was doing his homework and helping mom out around the house. It was very satisfying for me personally, and I think it contributed to their learning and development as future officers.”

Infielder Alex Jensen was one of the players who took it upon himself to show Borowicz how much of an impact he had by dedicating the remainder of the season to him.

The 2015 graduate tweeted out, “Dedicating the rest of my season to Coach B, our assistant coach, who just found out he is deploying to Afghanistan in two weeks.”

“It was an easy decision to dedicate the 2013 playoff run to him,” says Jensen. “He was an intricate piece to our success as a baseball club and as a family. Being the only coach on the staff who was serving in the military as well as a graduate who played baseball, he offered such valuable intangibles that the ballplayers could relate to.”

Jensen was thankful to have someone on staff that knew what a grind the Academy was and could be for cadets.

“He always understood what we would go through on a dayto-day basis as cadet studentathletes,” states Jensen. “’Coach B’ had a special bond with each and every player. He was dependable, empathetic, and trustworthy.”

The example Borowicz set for the squad that year was one the team marveled at and respected.

“Ultimately, service to our country comes first and foremost even ahead of baseball,” says Jensen. “His willingness to drop everything and put the mission first demonstrated the very quality of genuine leadership that so many Army baseball players admired and looked up to.”

The gesture by Jensen was received greatly by Borowicz, who was grateful to see the impact he was having as a coach.

“Having Alex do that was very humbling,” expresses Borowicz.

“As a coach, you like to think you’re having an impact on your players, but you don’t always see that right away. Sometimes, it might be years later that somebody will approach you. To have him go out of his way to do that was very special and very humbling. It gave me the satisfaction of knowing that what I’ve been doing here for the past six years is making a

difference.”

While in Afghanistan, Borowicz served as the Chief Engineer for a combined joint interagency task force which was tasked with rule-of-law operations. His job for the first six months was to build infrastructures for their justice system, primarily building jails or detention facilities, in addition to traveling around the country to oversee other projects and make sure they were on time and progressing properly.

“It was a great challenge and a great opportunity,” Borowicz says.

“It was probably one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the military. None of us knew each other, and we all came together to make

sure the mission got accomplished and that soldiers were safe and well taken care of.”

He compared it to something he knows well, a team.

“It was like when you’re going on the field, you’ve got your team and you’re trying to accomplish a common goal,” he says. “You do whatever it takes, whether it be bunt, steal or hit-and-run. We had a pickup game and had to figure out how to make it work, and we did.”

The mission was a successful one, something which Borowicz credits to his time spent at the Academy. Both as a cadet and a professor and coach, West Point taught him many of the skills that

prepared him for his ultimate job in the U.S. Army.

“I think what the Academy has taught me throughout my different times here as a cadet, professor and coach is that it’s all about the team and how you build that team,” expresses Borowicz. “Whether it was playing at Doubleday Field or being a member of a cadet company, you all had a common vision and goal, and you work together to achieve that goal.”

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Mark Clouse ★ filling his role BY john feinstein

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Almost 30 years later, Kevin Houston remembers the afternoon vividly. He was a West Point senior, the captain of the Army basketball team. He was also the leading scorer in the nation.

Every day in practice, he found himself matched up against Mark Clouse, a freshman from Cincinnati, who had become a solid player off the bench for coach Les Wohtke’s team – someone who could play good defense and consistently make an open shot.

“Kevin was double-teamed all the time,” Clouse says with a smile on a hot summer afternoon in Morristown, N.J., a stone’s throw from Mendham, his home base for the last six years. “I’d stand in the corner with my arm up. Often as not, Kevin would find me and I’d be all alone.”

In practice though, Clouse wasn’t waiting for Houston to find him, he was trying to drape himself on Houston at all times. Coach’s orders. “I was supposed to make it as hard as I could for him,” Clouse says. “Push him, chase him, annoy him. That was my job. It wasn’t easy. Kevin was very crafty. I’ve always told people that Kevin was Larry Bird in a 5’10” body. That made trying to guard him a serious challenge.”

Which, much like everything else Clouse has taken on in life, he took on with zeal.

He was so zealous that one afternoon, Houston did something he had never done in four years.

“I threw an elbow at him,” Houston says, failing to suppress a laugh. “Only time I ever threw one in practice or in a game. He got to me. I’m not sure who was more surprised – Mark or me.”

“It was me,” Clouse says. “But I figured I was doing what I was supposed to do.”

There haven’t been many times in Clouse’s life when he hasn’t done what he’s supposed to do – and done it well. He did it as a basketball player; as a cadet; as a pilot in the Army Air Corps and, nowadays, as a hugely successful businessman: last April, at the age of 47, he was named the Chief Executive Officer of Pinnacle, one of the largest food distributors in the country.

Clouse graduated from West Point in 1990 – as President of his class. He only played basketball for two years because a bad case of frostbite that happened when he was stationed in Alaska during the summer after his sophomore year took away his ability to cut and push-off as effectively as he needed to.

“I didn’t have much margin for error in order to compete athletically at the Division I level,” he says. “It wasn’t as if I was in great pain or anything, but I knew I’d lost something – just enough to make a difference. That’s when I went in and told coach Wothke that I didn’t think I should play that season. He was so loyal that I’m pretty sure he would have played me ahead of some of the younger guys we had coming in. That wouldn’t have been the best thing for the team. I needed to get out of their way.

“Still, it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life. Basketball was

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always my passion.”

Clouse ran some track and cross country in junior high school but was a year-round basketball player.

“I loved the fact that it was a team sport but you could also spend hours alone working on your game,” he says. “I think that feeling has shaped a lot of what I’ve become. I’m a great believer that leadership is the differentiator in life. A lot of people are smart, very smart. But if you can lead WELL, then you separate yourself.”

Clouse was a star at Northwest High School, graduating as the school’s all-time leading scorer and was all-city as a senior – no small achievement since Cincinnati produced 18 Division I players in the winter of 1986, including Tyrone Hill, the 11th player chosen in the 1990 NBA draft, and Joe Frederick, who

went on to start at Notre Dame.

Clouse was also an excellent student and a leader in student government at Northwest. He was recruited by a number of schools that played Division I basketball and also had excellent academic reputations: West Point; the Air Force Academy; Yale; Dartmouth and William and Mary among them.

“In the end the decision came down to two things,” he says. “I was always into leadership, I liked the idea of being a leader because I think good leaders are so important – in anything,” he says. “I wasn’t as passionate about the idea of being in the military as going to a place that taught leadership.

“But the other thing was when I visited I just felt so comfortable with the guys on the basketball team. I felt like I’d fit in with them. Once I’d done

that, the decision was pretty easy for me.”

Basketball helped get Clouse through “Beast Barracks.”

“We got to practice two or three afternoons a week,” he says.

“The older guys on the team became my support group in a lot of ways – actually for all the Plebes I think. If you play on a team at Army, you’re lucky because you bond with the guys you play with and you also bond with the guys in your company. It makes things a lot easier.”

Like most Plebes, Clouse struggled in every possible way first semester: academically, physically, emotionally. It wasn’t until he had survived that first semester that he became a contributor on the basketball court, coming off the bench to give Army an extra shooter and to play good defense – not to mention annoy Houston in practice.

“He was one of those guys who will do anything to make the team better,” Houston says. “If coach Wothke had asked him to run into a wall head-first, he’d have done it.”

Army was 14-15 that season and finished third in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with an 8-6 record. In those days, the league included schools like LaSalle, Iona and Fairfield, all excellent basketball schools. The Black Knights played non-conference games against Utah, Seton Hall and Navy – which was then in the Colonial Athletic Association. The Midshipmen were coming off a run to the Elite Eight the previous season and were led by national Player of the Year David Robinson. Led by Houston’s 37 points, Army almost ruined Robinson’s Senior Day game, leading most of the afternoon before losing in overtime.

“Even though we lost, that’s one of the most unforgettable days of my life,” Clouse says. “Kevin was unbelievable. We all believed we were going to win.”

They lost in overtime and ended

me, that we were able to do in China with Oreo what we did,” Clouse says.

“I mean you’re talking about one of the most iconic brands in the world.

There are 70,000 Oreos consumed every second on the planet. Think about that.”

Clouse has only one regret about his time in Beijing. “I had great tickets to see the Olympic gold medal game in 2008,” he says. “’Coach K’s’ (Mike Krzyzewski) first Olympic team.

The week before the Olympics, I got transferred to Brazil, so I couldn’t go to the game. The only good news was that some friends of mine had great seats to see the U.S. win that game.”

Clouse’s two years in China put him on the path that led to him eventually becoming the Chief Commercial Officer for Mondolez International Inc. – a spinoff of Kraft.

His success there got the attention of Pinnacle, which offered him the spot as CEO this past April.

“It’s been hectic,” Clouse says, three months into the job on the same afternoon in which he had delivered the first earnings report to stockholders. “Good news is our earnings were good. Makes it a lot easier.”

Clouse can handle days that aren’t as easy and he credits his four years at West Point with that.

“West Point was a life-altering experience for me,” he says. “I think it’s that way for most of us who’ve gone to school there. The bonds that are established there are unique. It’s like a fraternity you join forever. One of the best things that has happened since we moved to New Jersey is reconnecting with the Academy – with current cadets and with old friends who I hadn’t seen for a long time.”

Clouse credits recently departed basketball coach Zach Spiker with a good deal of that. Soon after arriving, Spiker began staging an annual alumni game and weekend for former basketball players. Spiker also asked a lot of former players to speak to current players about how they’ve

achieved the success they have in life. Clouse was one of them.

“Look, it would be great if they all became generals,” Clouse says with a smile. “But if they don’t, I want them to know that the skills they’re learning will convert to almost anything else they want to do in life.

They’re all smart and talented or they wouldn’t be at West Point.

“I think of all the things I learned there, the most important was the notion of playing for one another.

You learn it in basketball and you learn it as a cadet. I remember reading a study that was done during the Vietnam War. It asked the question how was it that soldiers were willing to jump out of fox holes even though they knew by doing so they faced almost certain death. The answer was that they didn’t want to let down the others in the fox hole.

“Playing for one another. It’s something we all learn. It’s the gift that West Point gives to us.”

Clouse admits that he was surprised when he was first informed that he had been selected to be part of “Mission First.”

“To me, Kevin (profiled last year) is the kind of athlete who belongs in “Mission First.” But then when I thought about it, I realized that most athletes at West Point are like me: guys who played a role, who tried to contribute in any way they could and who benefitted and learned from the experience.”

He smiles again. “I guess I’m happy to represent all those Army athletes. I think we’ve got a lot to be proud of when you think about it.”

Certainly his old teammates – stars and non-stars – would agree with that.

★ MISSION FIRST ★

up just missing out on Army’s first .500 season since Mike Krzyzewski’s 1979 team had finished 14-11.

A year later, with Houston gone, Clouse played more but the team won less. Then came the frostbite and the end of his playing days. By then, he had decided he wanted to become a pilot.

“Another challenge,” Clouse says, grinning. “Different challenge than guarding Kevin Houston every day, but a challenge nevertheless.”

He spent six-and-a-half years as a helicopter pilot, his last posting being in South Korea. By then, he had met and married Kathy McLeod, a teacher he’d been introduced to by a fellow pilot while he was stationed at Fort Irwin in Barstow, Calif.

“One of the most god-forsaken patches of land on earth,” Clouse remembers. “It’s right on the edge of the Mojave Desert. But being stationed there worked out well for me.”

Kathy had run track – “actually, she always says she wasn’t a runner, she was a SPRINTER,” Clouse says.

“Anything over 100 yards was not for her.”

Both loved sports and they were married about a year after they started dating. Both their sons are football players: Spenser is a junior wide receiver at Tufts University and Logan is a quarterback, a freshman starter at Mendham High School.

Once Clouse had decided not to make the Army a career, he had to figure out what he wanted to do next. He thought about the FBI, but decided to give business a try. He landed at Kraft Foods, figuring he’d try it for a year. He stayed for 20.

By the time Clouse went to work for Kraft, he and Kathy were starting their family. They lived all over the country and all over the world. Most importantly, Clouse was assigned to run Kraft-China in 2006. While there, he launched Oreo as a brand in China and it was wildly successful.

“That was a very big deal for

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★ MISSION FIRST ★

Lt. Col. Liam Collins ★ under the wire BY matt faulkner

★ MISSION FIRST ★

“I knew instantly that my life changed.”

Lt. Col. Liam Collins was overseas completing exercises with his Special Forces unit on Sept. 11, 2001, and that night he knew things were going to change, but he was ready for the challenge.

A month later he was dropping into Afghanistan.

“It was something that you had been training for your whole career,” says Collins. “In a lot of ways it is like a firefighter. You train and train and train and you really don’t want to go, but part of you wants to go. You constantly have that feeling that it is best that you never had to go, but if someone has to go, I hope I am the one to go.”

Being involved in combat situations was fairly new for the Green Beret and U.S. Army Ranger. He had completed many operational deployments to Bosnia, the Balkans, Africa and South America, but those assignments were not high-intense missions. However, Collins used those experiences to strengthen his knowledge to be prepared for a jump like the one he did in October 2001.

“The Bosnian and Balkans really weren’t intense conflicts, but I still went with the Special Forces unit and trained as if it could happen at any time,” Collins adds.

“Once you get the call to go, it is too late to start prepping. So when 9/11 did happen we were trained. We were ready to go and we didn’t need time to train to go into combat, we were already prepared.”

Collins was confident in his team going into the jump. Each member had their job to do because they were prepared.

“When I think about an operation, I don’t think about what I have to do. I already know what I have to do because we have done it so many times,” Collins says. “All I think about is all the things that could possibly go wrong. That way if something goes wrong you can react to it.”

The team felt the only way to get into the country was to complete a highaltitude, high-opening operation, which means to open the parachute a few seconds after exiting the aircraft. So at 18,000 feet, the unit started the Army’s first mission in Afghanistan.

Collins and his team took fire after the jump, had some close calls and countless other missions throughout his deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. He never allowed fear or adrenaline to interrupt because he had been training for years; it almost came natural while out on the battlefield. He drew part of that mentality from his athletic competitions.

“In training you have prepared so many times that it is just almost natural, and, in some ways it is almost like an athletic competition,” Collins says. “When nobody

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ 22

is shooting at you, you’re stress level is too low. Once the shooting starts you are at the optimal performance level because you are just excited. So some of that comes from athletics and all those years of competition where you have got to be just a little bit nervous to be at peak performance. I think that paid off for me.”

The 1992 West Point graduate was a four-year letterwinner in cross country and outdoor track.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and later was awarded a master’s and Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

In Collins’ words, he wasn’t the typical high school student applying to West Point. His family didn’t have a long military lineage and the Academy wasn’t something he thought about until his senior year.

Luckily for Collins, he stumbled upon West Point.

“It was senior year of high school and I didn’t really know what I wanted to go to college for, or where I wanted to go, or what I wanted to do, or how I was going to pay for it,” Collins says. “I figured, ‘What the heck, West Point sounds like a good school with a great reputation. I can go to school there and if I don’t like it after a couple of years I can always leave.’ Obviously it ended up being a great choice for me.”

No one had approached him about applying to the Academy, which led to him almost missing the nomination deadline.

“By the time I figured out I was considering West Point, all the nominations had closed except for one representative, and that nomination was due in about a week.” Collins adds. “So he had to FedEx the paperwork overnight to get it to me, so I could fill it out and send it back to make his deadline to get the nomination.”

Collins learned a lot from being

an athlete at West Point and it helped in his transition into the Army.

Collins came back to West Point to teach in the Department of Social Sciences in 2009 and was the Executive Director of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). That is where he met 1977 U.S. Military Academy graduate Vinny Viola and where the story of Liam’s Map starts.

When Collins left the CTC in 2011 to move to the Department of Social Sciences, he decided to give Viola a token of his appreciation for what he had done for the CTC since the beginning. At first he struggled to find something because he wanted it to be special. That was when he got the idea of giving Viola his map that he jumped into Afghanistan with.

“One of the things we had were these silky maps,” Collins says.

“They are basically used for escape and evasion, so if the worst thing happened you would have a map of the country that you could also use to secure water and sift out sediment from it and purify it or use it to wrap something up.”

Each map was issued with its own serial number, so if the map was

found, without its holder, at least one would know whose map it was and where they might have been going.

“I gave Mr. Viola that map and explained the story behind it and he was touched by that,” Collins adds.

Viola was so moved by the gesture that six months later he called Collins to tell him he decided to name his race horse after the map and Liam.

Liam’s Map was a colt born in 2011 in Kentucky and as a yearling was purchased by the Violas. The gray horse ran in eight races over a two-year career, which started in 2014. He won two races in his first season on the track with victories at Belmont Park and Aqueduct Racetrack. But his coming out party occurred in 2015.

“It took a while for the horse to mature, and as a 4-year old it really turned it on,” Collins adds.

Collins had stayed away from the racetrack for the horse’s first seven races. In fear that if he showed up the horse wouldn’t do well.

“All I could think was that I was scared out of my mind and hoped that the horse was a better runner than I was,” states Collins, while joking about his nerves and belief in superstitions. “I wanted to go see a race, but I was afraid if I went and the horse didn’t do well, I would be responsible because I am superstitious and somehow it would be my fault.”

The second season for Liam’s Map was amazing. He earned two wins leading up to the Breeders’ Cup race at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky. Liam’s Map was entered into the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile on Oct. 30.

It was going to be his last race and Viola needed the horse’s namesake at the racetrack.

“With a purse of one million dollars, he invited me and I reluctantly agreed to go watch it,” Collins adds. “My wife and I were joking; saying what happens if the horse doesn’t win? You realize we

can never ever go to one of these ever again.”

Collins couldn’t have been more wrong about bringing bad luck.

He and his wife, Judy, got the star treatment at Keeneland. They got to see all the horses come out for the race and then sat in the owner’s box. Once the bell rang for the start of the race, it got a little stressful.

Liam’s Map had a reputation for front-running speed and rarely came from the back, so when he was boxed in twice, Collins thought the race was over. He had no reason to think otherwise because the horse sat fifth at the three-quarters mark and four lengths off the leader and race-favorite, Lea.

All Liam’s Map needed was a sliver of daylight and he found it. He shot out like a cannon and erased the deficit in dramatic fashion with a victory by 2 1/2 lengths.

“It was phenomenal to watch him and watch him win in that way when you thought he lost it,” Collins says. “It was a pretty amazing

experience. I was humbled to be a part of it and definitely a once in a lifetime experience.”

West Point has helped Collins take quite a ride though his military career and along the way he always thought he had the best job ever.

“After I graduated I figured I was going to do it until it was no longer fun,” Collins says. “So it’s been awesome. I thought Platoon Leader was going to be the best job I ever had and then the next job was better than that as a Detachment Commander in the Special Forces.

Then I got Second Detachment and that was even better than the first one.”

Collins currently works in the Department Military Instruction as the Defense & Strategic Studies Program Director. He also has spent seven years as a volunteer assistant coach for the cross country and track and field team under former head coach Troy Engle and present head coach Mike Smith.

He jokes that he hasn’t grown up

yet and doesn’t know what he wants to do once he retires from the Army.

“I have been postponing this decision my whole life and I finally have to figure it out, but I haven’t totally figured it out yet,” Collins says.

The Army has taken Collins around the globe. It has put him in harm’s way in the Middle East, to the Winners Circle at a prestigious horse race. Not bad for a high school senior that nearly missed the deadline to this amazing career.

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Liam’s Map ran to victory at the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in Lexington, Ky.

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★ MISSION FIRST ★

Julie Del Giorno ★ making a difference BY mike vaccaro

“The combination of academic rigor, military discipline and training and a demanding physical fitness training program allowed us to develop as leaders committed to the values of Duty, Honor and Country. West Point training coupled with participation in intercollegiate athletics, sets men and women on a course to make significant contributions and to make a difference in the world.”

-- From Julie Del Giorno’s remarks

Army Sports Hall of Fame induction, 2013

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Julie Del Giorno was swallowing her medicine.

This was early on in her tenure at East Stroudsburg University, where she would serve as both the Assistant to the President and as the Interim Vice President for Student Affairs. The details of exactly what had gone wrong are lost to the mist of time, but this was the essence of the moment: Something had gone wrong.

Something had gone overlooked, or had been handled improperly, or had gotten into the wrong set of hands. And now Julie Del Giorno’s supervisor was going to take her to the woodshed and let her know exactly how profound the mistake had been.

“What I remember about that Dean,” Del Giorno says with a laugh, “was that when you screwed up, she wanted to make sure you knew you had screwed up.”

It was in this moment, a few weeks into this new job, that an old code returned to Del Giorno’s consciousness, a simple saying from the earliest hours of “Beast Barracks,” that seminal welcoming experience that all West Point Plebes endure.

And how do any of them forget the three things that senior cadets always drilled into them from the start?

“Yes, Sir.”

“No, Sir.”

“No excuse, Sir.”

That last one, especially.

The Dean was intimidating and she was blunt and she wanted to get a message across to her new subordinate, and if she’d had this meeting 300 times previously then all 300 had probably included the target of her ire pleading that there’s only so much they could do, that all blame shouldn’t be placed on one person’s shoulders, that isn’t fair …

… except this time, there would be a different answer.

“You’re absolutely right,” Del Giorno told her new boss. “My staff screwed up and I’m responsible for my staff, and so I’m responsible for this mistake. It won’t happen again. And if it does happen again, then you and I will go see the President together. But I’m certain it won’t happen again.”

No excuse, Sir.

“It’s funny,” Del Giorno says, “how the things you learn at West Point always tend to find a way to help you every single day after you leave there.”

All these years later, Julie Del Giorno still applies those lessons in her present

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job as the Director of Athletics Integrity and Investigative Services at Penn State University in State College, Pa. In that role she oversees development, implementation and oversight of compliance and athletics-integrity-program policies and practices within the university’s athletic department that ensure compliance and ethical conduct.

Now, in many ways, the creation of that office – and the recruitment of Del Giorno to fill it – echoes one of the fabled quotes ever rooted in the lore of the U.S. Military Academy.

It was, after all, Gen. George C. Marshall who, during World War II, is credited with saying, “I want an officer for a secret and dangerous mission. I want a West Point football player.”

There was nothing at all secret about the challenge that awaited Del Giorno when she arrived in State College. Penn State had been a bastion of all that was right about college athletics for decades, and was felled by one of the most humiliating scandals in NCAA history. Its very essence, its core values, had all been called into question, and the need for self-evaluation and repair within its infrastructure was critical if it ever wanted to restore its place in that firmament.

If it wasn’t a dangerous mission, it was absolutely an essential one.

And so the university turned to a West Point basketball player.

“When I was offered the job, I heard from plenty of friends and colleagues who asked, ‘Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to go there?’” Del Giorno says. “They weren’t discouraging me as much as making sure I knew what I was getting in to. But it’s like I told the coaches here once I took the job: I came to Penn State because of my respect for the place. This is a place that demands both excellence in academics and excellence in athletics for all its student-athletes. And I wanted to be a part of that. It’s such

a good fit for me. They had integrity long before I got here. And there will be integrity here long after I’m gone.”

She laughs.

“Really, that’s the thing I always took from my experience at the Academy and in the Army,” she says. “We are in the human-being business. Human beings are fallible, we use poor judgment, we make mistakes, and when we have a really big problem the question is: How do you address it? How do you fix it?

How do you lead.”

Those are issues that have been a part of Julie Del Giorno’s life – and a part of every day of that life – since she was 18 years old. ★★★

“I believe that the lessons learned through participation in athletics serve to provide an individual with training and skills that may not be otherwise learned or experienced; things like the value of teamwork; persistence; dedication; hard work; putting the goal of the team over your own individual wants, needs and goals; the importance of accomplishing the mission as a team;

and pushing yourself beyond the limits of what you believe you are capable of …”

Actually, she was 14 the first time she encountered West Point, because her sister, Deborah, had been appointed to the Class of 1982 and she would regularly visit – first from Rochester, N.Y., where both Del Giorno sisters were born, later from Florida, where the family moved when Julie was a freshman in high school.

“I became very interested in going there the moment I visited her the first time,” Julie recalls. “I would go visit her and see it and take it all in. I was probably much more suited to it personally than she was, I was very interested in athletics and I really liked the structure and the discipline.”

She was also a terrific basketball player, recruited by some Florida schools but ultimately committed to trying to compete at West Point, which by the time she arrived as a Plebe in the summer of ’82 – just weeks after Deborah graduated – was playing a highly competitive Division II schedule.

And Del Giorno thrived on the hardwood.

“Joyful,” she says, “is the best word to describe my time as an athlete there. I’ve taken complete joy in playing sports, especially basketball, since I was a kid and that was especially so at West Point.

“Playing with my teammates, and the stress release that I got going to practice. As a Plebe your head is spinning every day but there’s always the two hours of practice where all you have to worry about is playing and running and shooting. As a senior you may have a paper due and an exam to study for, but at practice you can just focus on playing. It’s funny: when I talk to student-athletes, sometimes they say they dread going to practice but I tell them, ‘Just enjoy the chance to play. Enjoy your teammates.’”

Del Giorno delivers remarks at her induction into the Army Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. competed at Army last year, and one of the athletes saw the jersey and took a picture of it and sent it around,” Del Giorno says, chuckling, before admitting: “That was kind of cool.” ★★★

“Playing basketball at West Point served as a transformational opportunity for me and taught me leadership lessons that I still apply on a daily basis ...”

You don’t have to tell anyone who spent four years at West Point that their college experience was a little different than most. Still, the student-athletes that Julie Del Giorno talks to every day all remind her of one important thing: everyone harbors the same desire to succeed, and must often confront the same impediments that would keep them from achieving what they want.

“Maybe we didn’t have as many opportunities to break rules as they do,” she laughs. “But sometimes we managed to, anyway. But it’s taking ownership of those mistakes that will help you learn and grow from them. I think that’s awfully important.”

Of course, her time in the Army is a constant presence as well; she served tours both in the first Persian War and in Somalia and earned a Bronze Star before starting her career in intercollegiate athletics at her alma mater from 1993 to 1996, the last three years of her 10-year service.

“I was provided an opportunity that set the stage for the rest of my life,” she says of her time in the Army. “Experience for leadership and real significant contributions that set the stage for the rest of my career.

For me the soldiers I served with and the leaders I served with, the people that trained me, the soldiers I was able to train and lead, all of that made me a better person and better leader as I transitioned out of the Army and into higher ed.

“So many of those decisions really were life and death. You were responsible for the well-being of someone’s life. I feel the same responsubilty now for the studentathletes under my watch. It’s the same privilege.”

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Del Giorno enjoyed her basketball experience at West Point to the max. As a sophomore the team qualified for the NCAA Division II Tournament and won the first postseason game in the program’s history, a 59-53 victory over Utica College played at the old Army Field House; they would be knocked out a round later, in the quarterfinals, by a powerful Valdosta State team, 92-65.

“I remember every small detail about that season,” she says. “That stays with you forever.”

Del Giorno made the most of her two remaining years of eligibility, too. As a junior in 198485 she averaged 14.9 points and 8.6 rebounds and earned second team All-America honors; as a senior she was even better, her averages of 18.3 points and 11.3 rebounds landing her a spot on the honorable mention AllAmerican team. Her career total of 1,270 points is still good for ninth on Army’s all-time scoring list.

She values her place in the West Point history books, especially since she is a prominent link from the program’s successful past to the present run of dominance it has enjoyed as a Division I participant; West Point has made trips to the NCAA Tournament two of the last three seasons, and three times since 2006. Del Giorno especially enjoyed watching the exploits of the Academy’s all-time leading scorer, 2016 graduate Kelsey Minato, who was a classmate and occasional roommate of Julie’s niece, Natalie.

Army recognized Del Giorno’s splendid career by inducting her into the Academy’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2013; two years later, on Jan. 24, 2015, her No. 32 jersey was lifted to the rafters at Christl Arena, and she became one of the first three women’s basketball players in Army history (along with Melody Smith and Katie Macfarlane) to have her number retired. It remains a humbling honor for her.

“Penn State’s gymnastics team

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★ MISSION FIRST ★

Joe DePinto ★ the servant-leader BY matt faulkner

★ MISSION FIRST ★

In order to lead, one must serve. That is the foundation of Joe DePinto’s management style as the Chief Executive Officer at 7-Eleven, which he traces back to his time at West Point and as an officer in the United States Army.

That unique style, which is known in the business world as servant leadership has been a part of DePinto’s career since he graduated from West Point in 1986.

“I have been a big believer, that if you are going to lead you have to serve and support,” DePinto says. “That gives you the permission and credibility to lead. The concept is called servant leadership. We didn’t call it servant leadership back then when I was at West Point or in the Army, but it is the same thing.”

After graduation, DePinto learned first-hand of the concept of servant leadership in the field as an Artillery Officer leading his troops in support of the Infantry and Armor branches.

Today he has used what he learned as an officer and contoured it to his current job as CEO of an iconic brand that relies heavily on its franchisees around the world.

“The best leaders I’ve seen, and the guys I wanted to follow, had a service and support heart,” DePinto says. “They were always thinking of others and putting others ahead of themselves. That really resonated with me and rubbed off on me.

It’s the way I believe a successful leader should be and West Point taught me that, and so did the Army.”

DePinto applied his service strategy to the concept of the “upside-down pyramid” when he came back to 7-Eleven in 2005 after a stint as President of the GameStop Corporation. In order to spread his message around a culture of servant leadership, he was approached to appear on a new hit reality show on CBS.

The network launched the reality show “Undercover Boss” in 2010, and two members of his senior leader team thought it was a great opportunity for DePinto to show the company’s culture and use of servant leadership.

At first he was against the experiment, but warmed up to the idea after discussing the positives that could come from the episode.

“There were two women on the team, one that was the head of strategy and other was head of marketing. They came and said, ‘Look we have been working on building this culture and trying to get folks to understand what servant leadership is.

There is no better way than for you to show that then to go on primetime television and show our customers and our internal folks,’” DePinto says. “So they got me to agree to it and it was a great experience.”

On Feb. 21, 2010, DePinto walked into a 7-Eleven on Long Island as Danny Rossi, in the first season of the hit show. He worked in the corporate bakery and helped deliver fresh food and goods in north Texas, where he almost got discovered.

He struggled to keep up with the rush-hour coffee consumers, fell behind on the conveyor belt and worked the night shift.

One of the employees he met on the episode was Igor Finkler, who became the highlight of the show. He came to this country with $50 in his pocket and was living

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ the American dream as a truck driver during the night shift. Finkler had that selfless attitude that DePinto loves and he was so impressed he decided to reward him with his own 7-Eleven store in north Texas.

“I am glad we did it, and it has worked out wonderfully for 7-Eleven,” DePinto says. “I could do without the questions every so often, but it has really worked out well.

We accomplished everything we were trying to do, which was to tell our organization that our stores and the people that work in our stores are the most important part of the organization. ‘Undercover Boss’ was just a great medium to share that.”

DePinto was first introduced to West Point through the game of hockey. He was initially told about it from one of his hockey coaches, Peter Roche, and he had the best connection to West Point if he was interested in attending.

“We were talking generally about colleges out East and he mentioned several colleges and one was West Point,” DePinto says.

“Interestingly enough his father knew Jack Riley but I don’t know what the relationship was. It was one of those things where I went out and visited and fell in love with a place.”

DePinto was able to play two seasons for the legendary coach Riley

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as a goaltender and those two years were tough, but he always knew the hall of fame coach had his back.

“Coach was a really good guy,” DePinto says. ”He provided a lot of tough love, but there was never any doubt that he was in your corner. He was always helping out cadets and had a passion to win and expected his players to come prepared. I had a lot of respect for him. He was a wonderful guy who left behind quite a legacy.”

When thinking back about those two seasons, DePinto realizes the leadership Riley provided and the influence that he had on him and other cadets.

Hockey was a special game to DePinto, who started playing at a young age and loved being part of a team.

He continues to be involved off the ice as a coach for his kids growing

up and currently works as an advisor to the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars.

“I did some coaching with my kids when they were younger,” DePinto adds. “I am involved with the Dallas Stars as part of their ownership advisory group. I stay close to the game in that way, just as I try to stay close to West Point.

I am involved as an advisory board member, so I advise their ownership group and it is pretty cool.”

DePinto has stayed engaged with West Point since earning his Engineering Management degree. He is a member of the Army A Club and was part of the “For Us All” campaign to raise money for the Academy.

West Point also became a family affair with his son John becoming a member of the Long Gray Line in 2012.

“I got to watch my son go

through West Point as a cadet,” DePinto says. “He was a good kid and a smart kid, but to see him transform into an unbelievable young man and see his friends transform, that was great.”

The experience he received as a parent of a cadet was a unique perspective and one that he looks back on and realizes West Point is such a special place.

“When I was there I just didn’t take it all in,” DePinto says. “I didn’t recognize the beauty of the place and the kind of transformation that was going on with people. When you see it as a parent, you recognize what West Point does and the leadership it adopts and teaches the young men and women.”

The father of four doesn’t leave his leadership role at work.

“West Point gave me the tools to be confident to lead in whatever role I’ve held,” DePinto says.

“Whether it is a husband, an Army officer or in business. I learned a lot around service, service orientation, mission orientation and a ‘can-do’ attitude. It really helped me teach my family and my children, the importance of service. If you ask my family today, they’d say we are very service-orientated and I am proud of all of them.”

Ask anyone that has known DePinto, worked with him or costarred on a reality show with him, and they’ll say he has become a great leader by serving his classmates,

teammates, employees, franchisees, customers and especially his family.

It’s been a remarkable journey to get to where he is today.

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Joe and Ingrid DePinto with sons (L-R) Nick, Danny (front), Joey and John

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★ MISSION FIRST ★

Col. Rob Dickerson ★ back where it all began BY harrison antognioni

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Col. Rob Dickerson had retirement on his mind in the spring of 2015, after just over 28 years of service in the United States Army. He had recently completed a two-year post in the Joint Staff J-5 department at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., where he worked under then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.

In his position at the Pentagon, Dickerson worked in the War Plans Division and aided in the proposal of recommendations regarding strategies, plans and policies and believed the job would be the final stop of a prestigious career in the Army that included nearly 15 years in Special Operations.

“I had kind of made up my mind to retire, but a few people mentioned to me that they thought I should come back to West Point because the Deputy Military Athletic Director job was opening up,” Dickerson says about returning to the place where he starred on the football field during the mid-1980s. “I had great memories of Col. Al Vanderbush and what he meant to me when he was Deputy Athletic Director when I was a cadet. He was always out at practice and he was a great role model. I thought, what a great opportunity for me to go back and do something I know I’m going to love to do.”

Dickerson supervises all military operations within the athletic department as Deputy Military Athletic Director and coordinates between the Academy, the athletic department and the U.S. Corps of Cadets to make sure cadet-athletes fulfill the necessary military requirements.

“For a guy like me who grew up playing sports, all of that stuff is in my wheelhouse,” Dickerson says. “I have management, leadership and sports all wrapped up into one.”

Dickerson’s love of sports and his early taste of the military lifestyle he would later adopt were cultivated even before to his arrival at West Point, during a postgraduate year at the Fork Union Military Academy in Fork Union, Va.

He competed in football, baseball and basketball at Delcastle Technical High School in his hometown of Wilmington, Del., before opting for a postgraduate year to polish up his academic resume before attending college.

“I was in electrical trade so I didn’t necessarily take the college preparatory classes that were required,” Dickerson remembers. “I went to Fork Union Military Academy and that got me adjusted to what the military was, meaning how to put on a uniform, how to make a bed, how to be organized and how to be disciplined.

“I had been recruited by Army and coach (Greg) Gregory had a great influence on me during that process. I looked into it a little more and I took a trip up and loved the place. I felt that I could make it and I felt challenged by the whole opportunity,

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both on the football team and at the Academy. I chose to come here and 34 years later, I’m still really glad I did that.” ★★★

Dickerson started at West Point in 1983 and, like many new cadets, had to strike a balance between the academic, military and athletic demands presented by the Academy.

He understood the requirements of cadet life from his prep-school year at Fork Union Military Academy and he knew the importance of playing Division I college football at West Point.

Army struggled during Dickerson’s Plebe year, finishing with a 2-9 record under first-year head coach Jim Young. But despite losing the 1983 season opener to Colgate at Michie Stadium, Dickerson felt proud to don the Black and Gold for the first time.

“It wasn’t so much about the first game, but just about the aura of putting on an Army football uniform, playing in Michie Stadium and being reminded of all those great football players that had worn the uniform and played on the field that I was going to go play on,” Dickerson reflects. “Even at that age, being a 19-year-old Plebe, I knew how special it was to be able to say I was an Army football player.”

Dickerson was shut out from the stat sheet in the opener, but quickly made a reputation as a reliable tight end, making a pair of receptions in the season’s second game against Louisville and going on to start twice as a freshman.

Dickerson went on to play in all 46 games during his football career, including starts in every game of his sophomore, junior and senior years.

After adjustments to the offense following the 1983 campaign, the Black Knights finished 8-3-1 in 1984, won the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy and earned the Academy’s

first-ever bowl victory with a 10-6 win over Michigan State in the Cherry Bowl.

Young changed the Cadets’ offensive scheme for the 1984 season, opting to run out of the wishbone formation in the hopes of better utilizing the team’s strengths as a run-heavy team. Even while switching to an offense that featured a higher frequency of running options in 1984, Dickerson turned in his best pass-catching season as an Army player. He caught 11 passes, including four for touchdowns, with the first score coming in a pivotal early season game at Tennessee.

“Our second game of the season was against Tennessee in Knoxville in front of about 95,000 fans wearing orange. We stayed with them the whole game and came back and tied them with a few minutes left,” Dickerson remembers. “That’s probably the only time in my life that a tie was good enough because it was a catalyst and we got so much confidence from that game and it pretty much carried us through the rest of the year.”

Army went to its second straight

bowl game the next year, defeating Illinois in the Peach Bowl to cap the 1985 season at 9-3. The Cadets posted their third consecutive winning season the next year, despite suffering a rash of injuries.

Dickerson caught just two passes as a senior after switching positions to left tackle, but helped Army to a 6-5 record and its second Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy in three seasons, after defeating service academy-rivals Air Force and Navy.

“After the third game of the season, coach Young asked me to move to left tackle due to three starting linemen being injured,” Dickerson says. “I played that position for the rest of the season. I didn’t consider the move to be that significant a change because in the wishbone, even as a tight end, your primary job is being a blocker which I enjoyed doing.”

Following his senior football season, Dickerson was approached by the boxing team to join and compete during the spring.

He accepted and eventually was crowned champion in the heavyweight division at the Brigade Boxing Open.

Dickerson admits being nervous in the months after graduating from West Point, not knowing how he would be received as an officer and a leader in the Army. He went to Flight School in Fort Rucker, Ala., and graduated in July 1988 before beginning his career as an officer in Wiesbaden, Germany.

“I’d never been a Platoon Leader before and I was nervous,” Dickerson remembers. “You have those fears: how are the soldiers going to view me? Are they going to view me as a leader? Are they going to respect me? You have all those normal fears, but you always remember to refer back to your training and do the things that you were taught.

Like lead from the front, be a role model, do the right thing when nobody’s looking. If you fall back

on the training and all of the great characteristics of leadership that they teach you both as a cadet and as a football player at West Point, you’re going to do very well.”

In Germany, Dickerson worked in Operations as an Assistant S-3 and deployed in Operation Desert Storm before eventually returning back to Fort Rucker for an advance flight course in 1992. He was accepted into the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment to begin his nearly 15 years in a Special Operations position.

Dickerson stayed in the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment for 10 years and next went off to Okinawa, Japan, with Special Operations Command Pacific to work in a detachment command. He was in Japan from 2002 through 2005 before returning stateside to work

as an ROTC commander at Tulane University in New Orleans, La.

Stops in Fort Campbell, Ky., and Fort Lewis, Wash., followed before Dickerson made his way to the Pentagon to begin his role as a J-5 Officer in 2013.

With his nearly 30-year Army career nearing its end, Dickerson knows being back at West Point is exactly where he belongs. And he knows the lessons learned from athletics are just as much a part of West Point as anything else.

“Before coming here, I never heard of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s message on athletics and I never thought long and hard about the traits of an athlete,” Dickerson says.

“But it became readily apparent after I left West Point and as I progressed in the Army that the things you need to be successful as a military leader

are the same kind of traits, whether it be tenacity, being organized, being disciplined, being a team player, camaraderie, everything I learned as a football player translated over and formed what I was as a military leader.

“Coming back to West Point, I’ve noticed that things have changed, but the individuals have remained the same. The type of cadet that I was familiar with and went to school with back in the ’80s, that has without a doubt remained a constant. The fact that I can sit down now with cadetathletes when it gets a little tough for them and say, ‘Just remember the thousands upon thousands of folks that have gone before you that have made it,’ is very rewarding.”

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2nd Lt. Vanessa Edwards ★ mother and daughter in arms BY ally keirn

Gillis Field House was standing room only. Those in attendance could barely hear what the person next to them was cheering, but at the same time could hear all the action taking place on the court. The cadet fan section, filled with painted chests and fatheads of the athletes, was rowdy with excitement as the Army West Point volleyball team continued to perform well throughout a five-set battle against service academy rival Navy.

All eyes were on center court, but there was one fan who was watching one player in particular from afar. While on deployment in Afghanistan, this particular fan was cheering just as loud as those in attendance. And that was Master Sgt. Michelle Edwards, mother of recently commissioned Second Lieutenant Vanessa Edwards, who was then a senior setter on the team.

There was a secret amongst the coaches and support staff as the match continued to stretch over five sets. A secret that would cause even more cheers if the Black Knights were able to hold on and proceed to victory.

In the final set, Army won the match 3-2 to clinch the Star and storm the court, but the giddiness did not end there.

As the tumult suppressed and the alma maters were played, the public address announcer regained the attention of the crowd for a momentous announcement.

Head coach Alma Kovaci Lee, grinning from ear to ear, gave away no hints to the players that had confused looks on their faces as they stood on the end line awaiting the news. Then the announcement was made and more cheers of appreciation filled the field house and the Army base in Afghanistan.

Vanessa Edwards had eclipsed 2,000 career assists during the 3-2 win over Navy. ★★★

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Vanessa deciding on a path that would lead her to the military was not a surprise to her family, which had a plethora of members in the armed forces. Her mother, father, uncle and both grandfathers had been in the military and their commitment to service had been instilled upon Vanessa at a young age.

“Her mom is one of her biggest role models,” says Edwards’ best friend on the team, Nicole Perri. “Vanessa’s decision to come to West Point and to serve her country stems from somewhere and being that both of her parents were in the military had influenced that. She made them proud by coming to West Point and serving her country, and being able to play volleyball along the road was an added bonus.”

Kovaci Lee knew that Edwards was the type of player she wanted on her team,

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ and the type of player that would be a perfect fit for the U.S. Military Academy. Kovaci Lee saw her at a tournament while recruiting and couldn’t get Edwards out of her head.

“I first saw Vanessa at a recruiting tournament and she wasn’t even setting,” Kovaci Lee recalls. “She was passing and playing defense. Vanessa had this infectious energy and passion for the game that combined with great athleticism which made her unique. You could even tell then, that she was someone special and was born to be a positive and inspiring leader.”

Kovaci Lee wasn’t the only one who saw distinct leadership qualities in Vanessa. Those qualities were evident to her teammates, mother and those in the Admissions Office at West Point.

“I was enormously proud of Vanessa for choosing to go to West Point,” says mother Michelle. “I think she is a shining star and I think she was born to be a leader.”

Commitment is a common

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theme for the Edwards family as Michelle had shown unconditional love and support to Vanessa from a young age, all stemming around the sport of volleyball.

“When I started playing volleyball she was very adamant that, if I was going to do something, I was going to put all of my effort towards it,” Vanessa reflects. “I remember before I had my driver’s license, she would get off of work and not even come inside and would pick me up and she would take me to practices and games, and support me the whole time. She wanted me to give 100 percent, but she also gave me 100 percent in whatever I was doing.”

Although she was away from home, Vanessa still carried the mindset of giving 100 percent into something, and it was noticed by Kovaci Lee and the team.

“I believed in her from ‘Day One,’” says Kovaci Lee. “She wanted to learn, she loves the game and is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever

had the pleasure to coach. Vanessa would have an hour off some days and would ask if I was available to help her. Vanessa was in it 100 percent. She believed in the power of the team and wanted everyone to be successful on and off the court and therefore, she spent a lot of time talking to players and coaches.

Vanessa wanted to learn so she could better serve the team. She did not start her first year but her attitude, desire and work ethic never changed; it got better as the year progressed.”

Vanessa’s development at the Academy throughout her first three years would irrevocably prepare her for the news that she would receive before her Firstie year. She began her senior season on the Army volleyball team with a heavy bearing; that her mother, her number one fan and supporter, would be on deployment and therefore would not be able to attend a single game in person.

However, the admiration Vanessa had for her mother outweighed any sadness she may have had in the situation because of the family’s ties to the military and their commitment to service.

“I was here at the Academy when my mom told me she was being

their daughter would soon be on the battlefield.

“We talked about what my deployment was like,” Michelle explains. “I wanted her to know what she is in for so we would talk about that a lot. Vanessa and I were very close before I left for deployment. It has changed in some ways like when we talk on the phone now instead of me asking her how she is doing, what she needs or what I can send her.

It has transformed to her worrying about me and asking me what I need and sending me care packages.”

Vanessa still counted on her mom though, if not for basic needs, for mental support as her time as a Black Knight came to a close.

“My mom was the one I called when I had four papers due and had a really stressful week,” Vanessa says. “She was always on the phone with me before the games and after the games, she was so encouraging and still is. She always watched the games online when she couldn’t make it in person and it really meant a lot this year especially. We had tournaments in the past in California and she would meet me there and watch the games. She has been one of my biggest fans.”

The support Michelle provided her daughter was infectious. It wasn’t

just felt by Vanessa, but also by the coaching staff and even the players.

It was astounding that even halfway around the world, the positive impact that her mom could make.

“Vanessa would talk to her mom before every single game,” Perri says.

“She would be on video chat with her, kind of like her pregame ritual.

Every time that she would talk to her mom, Vanessa would be so excited. I think honestly that even though she was in Afghanistan, their relationship had grown tremendously.”

Upon graduation, Vanessa was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army in the presence of her mother and military family. She joins the ranks of her family members in arms, but especially the ranks of her mother.

“Words cannot express how proud I am of Vanessa,” her mother confesses proudly. “I can’t explain how lucky I feel to be her mom and what an honor it’s going to be to serve with her at the same time in the military.”

★ MISSION FIRST ★

deployed,” Vanessa remembers. “I was happy for her because she was a Senior Non Commissioned Officer (NCO) and it was a good place to see how far her career had taken her. It was really exciting, but then I realized that she wouldn’t be here for events such as Ring Weekend and Senior Night – these huge milestones that I would love to have her here for and I was sad. I had wished she was able to be there, but I understood.”

Kovaci Lee saw a change in the way the three-year starter played during her final year in the West Point uniform.

“Vanessa would feed off her parents’ energy and excitement in the game and that didn’t change with her mother’s deployment,” Kovaci Lee says. “I feel like I have learned a lot more from Vanessa than she has learned from me. The team respected her encouragement and her leadership style. Everyone did. Her mother, Michelle, is her hero. She has been by Vanessa’s side through her college career, and no matter the distance, she has been there helping her through life at West Point.”

Although her mom was not able to be there physically, the support she had shown Vanessa helped her through her final year as a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy and gave her a new appreciation for her mother.

“I missed her so much,” confesses Vanessa. “She is doing what I will be doing after graduation and after I commission as an officer.

So, I think that was why we talked more than we have ever talked before. She is not only just my mom anymore, she is a Senior NCO and mentor for me now.

Her mother did not want to keep any secrets from Vanessa, the person in their family that was most likely next on the list for deployment.

She also noticed a paradigm shift in their dynamic, one that would give confidence to any mother that knew

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★ MISSION FIRST ★

2nd Lt. Jesse Glenn ★ setting the bar high

BY Harrison Antognioni

★ MISSION FIRST ★

With his collegiate gymnastics career having recently come to a close, Jesse Glenn sits on the top floor of the Gross Center, overlooking mats, bars and a foam pit below.

He sits at a table that holds the Nissen-Emery Award that he received in April at the College Gymnastics Association (CGA) Awards Banquet. The prestigious award is presented annually to the nation’s top senior gymnast.

His gymnastics career is still too recent to truly reflect on, but it’s easy to see how much it means to him.

“Looking back on it, you want to point out one instance that was great or one that was terrible, but there’s been so much that I almost can’t look back,” Glenn says. “I love it, it was hard and I’m grateful that I made it through and had such great experiences with the people I met here and competed with.”

Glenn’s decision to attend West Point was one that happened suddenly. He came to the Academy for his brother’s “R-Day” during the summer of 2011 and was soon able to picture himself fitting in with the order and discipline for which the school is known.

His brother, Josh, was a year older and wanted to come to West Point, but Jesse, despite the admiration and respect for the institution, initially didn’t know if it was the right place for him.

“I thought it was cool and I admired everything they did, but I thought, ‘It’s not for me,’” Jesse says.

It was after meeting with the members of Army’s coaching staff and really being exposed to what the school had to offer that Glenn was able to get a sense of what he would be getting himself into at West Point.

“I had been changing my decisions a little bit for where I wanted to go to college because academics were a really big consideration,” Glenn remembers. “I just realized that it was the best place for me. It may not be the easiest and I knew it was going to be hard, but I knew I wanted to push myself and see what I could do.”

Glenn grew up in a family of gymnasts, with his older brother and three younger sisters all participating.

The five kids attended practices together and often took those practice sessions home, where they worked on handstands and a series of other training routines.

“It’s part of who we are as a family and it was cool to have that in common with your brother and sisters,” Glenn says. “It wasn’t super serious at first, but there was always a conflict, because someone was always taking up the room and trying to pull their stuff out and practice. People were on the couch trying to watch TV and the girls were doing their thing on the beam right in front of the TV. It was hilarious.”

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ 42

By the time he was considering colleges, Glenn knew competing in gymnastics was something he wanted to do, but that wasn’t always the case.

Glenn remembers wanting to quit the sport early on, but stayed with it on insistence from his parents.

He stuck with the sport long enough to join USA Gymnastics’ Future Stars program as a 10-year-old, where he practiced technique and saw a dramatic spike in his ability level.

“After Future Stars, I started getting a lot better,” Glenn recalls.

“When I was 12 or 13, I made the Junior National Team and I got to compete with all of the big guys and see them compete and that really motivated me. That’s when I knew I wanted to go far.”

Glenn competed with the Junior National Team for six years and experienced a multitude of highlights, including an appearance at the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore and winning a gold medal on high bar at the 2011 Men’s Junior Olympic National Championships in Long Beach, Calif.

It was that level of stardom that put Glenn on the radar of Army head coach Doug Van Everen, and countless others from around the nation.

Van Everen recalls noticing Glenn by the time he was in eighth grade as part of the Junior National Team, but knew his staff wasn’t the only one aware of Glenn’s talent and future potential.

“I wasn’t really thinking we had a great opportunity to even get him honestly, because by the time he was a junior, he had all of these scholarship offers,” Van Everen remembers. “After he came here with his brother, he ended up seeing what West Point was about and the type of people that were here and that was really the big selling point.

He got his application done and started telling everybody he was going to West Point, so we thought, ‘Maybe he IS coming.’”

Glenn did make the decision to attend the Academy and experienced a strong start in his initial competitions as an Army gymnast, with individual victories

in the team’s first dual meets of the 2013 campaign. He finished first in the all-around competition during a season-opening setback at fourthranked Penn State before tacking on first-place finishes in all-around and high bar disciplines in a loss at Air Force.

He also found an enjoyment in being on a team and embraced the experiences that came with being part of a college program.

“I had competed at international competitions, but I think the whole college experience was so much different,” Glenn shares. “When you come here, it becomes more of a team sport. Everyone gets really into it and they’re not afraid to get pumped up. There was some of that before, but I think it went to another level when I got here.”

He added a third consecutive win in all-around at the West Point Open and became the first Army gymnast to earn an all-around title in the history of the event, which started in 1991.

Glenn posted top finishes in allaround and floor exercise in meets against Navy and William & Mary before suffering a wrist injury away from competition that forced him to sit out the remainder of his freshman season.

He rehabbed in the offseason and returned for his sophomore year, but despite his run of success as a freshman, there were times that he struggled with balancing all of the Academy’s demands.

“He was just incredible, it was easy to see that right away,” Van Everen remembers. “But one of the things that kind of slowed him down a little bit was that he was driven to excel at everything. He doesn’t do anything halfway. He would empty his tank on academics and then he would empty his tank when he went to practice. One of the challenges at West Point, no matter what sport you’re in, is to try to find that balance. He was such a driven kid

provided Army an automatic qualification to the NCAA Championships in Norman, Okla., where Glenn advanced to the individual finals on high bar.

As a senior, Glenn and the Black Knights competed to a tie with Navy atop the leaderboard at the ECAC Championships, but Navy earned the coveted bid to the NCAAs due to producing a higher road score during the season.

Despite not advancing to the NCAAs as a team, Glenn qualified for the national tournament for the third time in his career and took home individual titles in all-around, floor exercise and high bar at the ECACs.

Glenn went with nine teammates to the 2016 NCAAs in Columbus, Ohio, as an individual competitor, and while he didn’t bring back NCAA hardware, he was presented with the Nissen-Emery Award as the nation’s best senior gymnast, becoming the first gymnast in Academy history to earn the award.

“It was pretty special to get the award,” Glenn says. “So many people helped me get where I am and I feel like it’s a representation of our team more than me. I was sitting there with the team taking a picture with the award and I was like, ‘This is our award, we did it and we put our

name on the map.’”

Along with helping put Army Gymnastics on the map, Glenn kept himself in the national conversation throughout his career, finishing in the top 10 for all-around and high bar as both a sophomore and junior before ending his senior season ranked first in high bar with an average score of 14.925.

Glenn finished out his college experience by earning the Army Athletic Association Award, presented annually to the top male and female cadet-athletes over a career and regarded as West Point’s highest athletic honor.

“I struggled with what I was going to think when I was done because I’ve been doing this sport for my whole life,” Glenn says. “I was trying to enjoy it as much as I can and make it a good experience for everyone and help them love the sport and enjoy that team experience.

“If I can leave and everyone’s enjoying the sport and remembers why they’re doing this sport, that makes me happier than winning any award.”

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that it was just go, go, go.”

As is the case with many cadets, the balance eventually became easier for Glenn, as he went on to reach new heights as an athlete and complete his four years with a 3.450 grade-point average as an Engineering Management major.

Glenn helped lead the Black Knights to four straight victories midway through the 2014 season before earning all-around and high bar titles at the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championships for the first of his nine career individual conference championships. His performances helped him qualify for the NCAA Championships for the first time.

While Glenn’s gymnastics success continued through his sophomore campaign, it was a moment outside of the gym when he really was able to stop and reflect on his experience at West Point so far.

“I was walking down from the gym and thinking to myself, ‘Man this is rough,’” Glenn recalls. “It was a bad day for us, but I realized how much it pushed me and how much I had grown in the year-and-a-half that I’d been here. I don’t think anything could replace that and I realized that this was the best place for me.

Maybe I would have had an easier life somewhere else, but I knew I was at the right place.”

His decision to come to West Point was further solidified at the end of his junior season, as he garnered ECAC individual titles in allaround, high bar, vault and parallel bars to help send his team to its first ECAC championship since 2005.

“That was one of the best moments ever and something we’ve been chasing for a long time,” Glenn says. “Winning as an individual is cool, you get rewarded for working hard, but it’s not as fulfilling. You won, but you’re up there by yourself.

When you win as a team, it’s almost more real.”

The ECAC championship

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Shane Kimbrough ★ MAN ON A MISSION

BY KEVIN GLEASON

★ MISSION FIRST ★

Every kid wants to be an astronaut or a professional athlete, right? But the idea usually fades away by, what, sixth or seventh grade? Somewhere around reaching the double-digit age, kids realize the idea isn’t only far-fetched but somewhat comical, in the same goal-setting neighborhood as, say, becoming a pro athlete.

And so they find more realistic goals like a teacher or a trainer, maybe a doctor or even a lawyer.

Robert Shane Kimbrough never stopped wanting to be an astronaut. His grandparents lived virtually across the street from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where Shane spent much time during his early years watching the activity with wonderment.

He just didn’t realize he could accomplish the goal by attending the United States Military Academy.

Born in Killeen, Texas, Kimbrough grew up in a military family. His dad, a retired colonel, served three years in Vietnam and Shane spent most of his scholastic years in the Atlanta area. His parents, though, carefully created a typical upbringing for Shane. The military wasn’t drilled into him. Shane pretty much discovered the Academy the way many teens come upon West Point.

Through sports.

Football was his favorite, but at 5’10” and 165 pounds, Shane saw his college calling in a sport less determined by size. He could throw a baseball fairly hard and accurate. He was a pitcher.

He had a few Division I offers. Army baseball coach Dan Roberts started recruiting Kimbrough, and he was struck by the beauty and history of West Point upon his visit as a high school senior. He decided he wanted to be an Army officer.

“I thought, if I was going to be an Army officer,’’ he says, “I was at the very least going to be the best Army officer I could be.’’

While those words echo a popular Army slogan, they also exemplify Kimbrough’s outlook on life. There were no shortcuts, no apathetic crawl toward meeting minimal standards. Kimbrough poured every ounce of effort into everything he did. He lacked the typical Division I frame, even for baseball and certainly for D-I pitchers. But his mental toughness, his poise and focus and ability to shrug off adversity, helped make him a bulldog on the mound.

“It was nothing like anything I had ever experienced,’’ Kimbrough says of West Point. “It was taking people kind of out of their comfort zone. I learned a lot about myself. I learned to be part of a team. The people were great. Of course, you don’t get a feel for how tough (West Point) is.’’

Kimbrough, who would major in Aerospace Engineering, had a typically tough

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ transition as a freshman. But few cadets outworked him, in the classroom or on the ballfield. He made the Dean’s List his sophomore year, an academic achievement he would carry the rest of his West Point career.

A left-hander, Kimbrough was a starter his first two seasons despite a fastball that topped out at maybe 85 miles per hour. But he could put it where he wanted and used a nasty split-fingered fastball, a popular “out-pitch” of the times. It looked like a change-up, arriving in the low- to mid-70s, and danced past lunging batters.

Kimbrough was moved into the closer’s role as a junior. He changed his delivery that season to compensate for a barking elbow and became even more adept at slicing pitches into tiny pieces of the strike zone.

By senior season, he was captain of the 1989 Army team.

Kimbrough wasn’t the “in-your-

46

face” team captain. He was the quintessential captain and future soldier who focused on supporting teammates while displaying a model work ethic. He led the squad with 15 appearances in 1989, and Kimbrough’s five saves remain 10th all-time on Army’s single-season list.

Army won 82 games in Kimbrough’s career. He branched in Aviation, and even after three or four years in the military figured his chances of becoming an astronaut were remote. In late-1990, barely more than a year after graduating from West Point, he was assigned to the 24th Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Ga., and soon deployed to Operation Desert Storm. Kimbrough was an attack helicopter Platoon Leader. He earned a master’s of science degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998 and became an Assistant Professor in Math Sciences at West Point.

Kimbrough was teaching at West Point when a 1979 Academy

graduate named Pat Forrester, a senior Army astronaut at NASA, asked Kimbrough to work at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“We bring young officers in that have potential to let them work for a while,’’ says Forrester, who has performed three Space Shuttle missions. “As a commander, as soon as I met him, I thought he’d be the perfect guy. We look at everything: education, GPA, assignments, references. … I think the same kind of people that West Point looks for, NASA looks for.’’

Forrester cites Kimbrough’s personality, demeanor, leadership and “followership” -- a NASA buzzword describing an adept leader who can co-exist perfectly with peers -- as well as a reliable “gut feeling.’’

“Every now and then, I’m proven wrong,’’ Forrester says matter-offactly.

He was, as usual, on target in assessing the makings of this astronaut.

Kimbrough worked at Johnson for a couple years and became one of 5,000-6,000 people applying for the NASA program. Eleven candidates would be chosen. Merely reaching the interview stage, the final 100 candidates, was a significant accomplishment. Intensive medical testing weeded out many candidates with the most subtle of health issues.

Kimbrough fit the profile despite NASA’s leadership philosophy slightly differing from that of West Point’s.

“They don’t necessarily want somebody to take charge and make commands all day,’’ he says.

Kimbrough fielded questions for an hour before a 15-person selection board. He was selected by NASA in 2004, and by 2008, he completed his first Spaceflight on STS-126, a 16-day mission to expand the crew living quarters to accommodate a sixmember crew.

Eight-and-a-half minutes after launch, at speeds of 17,500 miles per hour inside a craft with six fellow

Kimbrough prepares for his second trip to the International Space Station in September 2016. handy.

“The really stressful part is the realization that you’ve put in two years of training continuously and thousands of people have put in time to make sure that he’s able to do the mission,’’ Bowen says. “The realization that now it’s up to me to get the job done. That’s really the burden.’’

Kimbrough’s second mission will be a five-month endeavor from Russia aboard Expedition 49/50 with two Russian cosmonauts scheduled for takeoff in September.

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crew members working in quarters the size of a small tent, Robert Shane Kimbrough, West Point Class of ’89, crafty lefty with that nifty splitfingered fastball, was in Space.

“It was just incredible,’’ says Kimbrough, one of 40-something astronauts in the U.S. “The launch was incredible, an incredible feeling having those rockets attached to you.’’

He performed two Spacewalks for a total of 12 hours, 52 minutes, an exercise to fix parts of the Space Station. Kimbrough describes the job as trying to change the oil in a car wearing ski mittens. The labor included installing a new television camera and setting up GPS receivers.

“It’s a very detailed thing,’’ he says. “It was a challenge.’’

Stephen Bowen, also performing his first mission, was alongside Kimbrough. “He was awesome,’’ says Bowen, who has accomplished three missions. “His attention to detail; he is very operationally minded. His focus is on getting the job done, which is very important. To do that and to not make it too stressful, to make it a comfortable work environment. When the stakes are that high, I think that’s when being an Army helicopter pilot comes in

It’s a Russian vehicle taking off in the middle of the desert. Kimbrough spent two-and-a-half years training for the mission, including thoroughly learning the Russian culture and its language. The crew will spend two days testing the craft’s modified systems before docking at the Space Station. At the Station, they will join three Expedition 49 members, and together the six-crew will perform over 200 experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.

“He has that special quality that you want to be around him,’’ Forrester says of Kimbrough. “I trust him like family. I admire him for what kind of man he is and what kind of astronaut he is.’’

Kimbrough, like his dad a retired colonel, doesn’t think about the risks of the mission. He’s focused solely on how he will perform his duties and help care for the crew, keen assets honed at the Academy and implemented on military missions.

“The crew is the most important thing to me,’’ he says. “You have a team of hundreds of people on the ground that are making sure that we are going to come back to our families. Those people are so dedicated; they are special. Their whole mission is to get us into Space and get us back home.’’

One of the hardest parts of Kimbrough’s job is being away from his wife Robbie and their three children for extended periods. One son, 16, just began his junior year in high school. Twin daughters, 18, just left for college.

“No matter how many times you leave or deploy, it only gets harder,’’ he says.

“It’s hard and he does it very well,’’ Forrester says. “He is a family guy who is involved in their lives.

That’s an extra burden for a guy like that.’’

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Mike Krzyzewski ★ no excuses BY john feinstein

★ MISSION FIRST ★

It has been more than 47 years since the June day in 1969 when Mike Krzyzewski graduated from West Point and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army.

He has gone on to become one of basketball’s most iconic figures—a coach with more wins than anyone who has ever coached college basketball at the Division I level, someone who has become a one-name star: “Coach K,” no further introduction needed.

And yet, all these years later, Capt. Michael William Krzyzewski, U.S. Army (ret.) will tell you there isn’t a day that goes by that he doesn’t think about his alma mater and how fortunate he was that his parents convinced him to go to a college he had zero interest in attending.

“The very first thing I think about when I think of my school is how proud I am to be from there,” he says, sitting in his palatial office on the Duke University campus on a warm spring afternoon. “I’m proud of it every single day. I never take my West Point ring off.”

He pauses to twist the ring on his finger, looks at it for a moment, smiles and continues.

“West Point is a part of me, it’s a part of who I am. I have no idea where my life would have gone if I hadn’t gone to school there but I’m pretty certain it wouldn’t have been to this.”

“This,” is an office filled with mementos of a remarkable career: five national championships and 12 Final Fours during his 36 years as Duke’s coach, not to mention three stints as the U.S. Olympic coach and 1,043 career wins, the first 73 as the head coach at Army.

Krzyzewski readily admits he wasn’t the least bit impressed or tempted when the new coach at Army, a 24-year-old novice named Bob Knight, showed up on his doorstep on a June evening in 1965. Knight had come to Chicago to visit Loyola Academy to talk to coach Gene Sullivan about one of his players.

While they were talking, Sullivan mentioned that the leading scorer that season in Chicago’s Catholic League was still undecided about where he was going to go to college. Knight called Al Ostrowski, Krzyzewski’c coach at Weber High School who, in Mike’s words was, “blown away,” by the thought of one of his players going to Army.

That evening, Knight visited William and Emily Krzyzewski and their younger son.

“The thing is, my parents were overwhelmed by the notion that I might have the chance to go the United States Military Academy and then serve my country,” Krzyzewski says. “They thought it was an honor just to have coach Knight come to their home to talk about it.

“I didn’t feel the same way. I was NOT blown away by the thought of going to Army, not at all. I did NOT want to go into the Army for four years, no way. It really had nothing to do with Vietnam, it had more to do with the fact that I knew I wanted to be a coach. I didn’t think going to Army and being in the Army was going to get me

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there.”

Knight suggested the Krzyzewskis take a few days to think about Mike’s decision. For the next couple of days, William and Emily staged an evening ritual.

“They would stand in the kitchen talking, knowing I was in the next room listening. They spoke Polish to one another and I didn’t understand very much. But there’s no word in Polish for ‘stupid,’ or for ‘dumb.’ So, I would hear, ‘Mike stupid; Mike dumb.’

“I knew what they were doing.

They were goading me. Finally, I just walked in one night and said, ‘Okay, okay, I’ll do it.’

His eyes glistened just a little at the memory. “Other than marrying my wife, it was the best decision I ever made. Or, more accurately, it was the best decision my parents ever talked me into.” He smiles one more time. “Or conned me into.” ★★★

Krzyzewski talks often about how his West Point experience has influenced his coaching. Perhaps no coach in history has ever embraced FAILURE the way he has.

“At West Point you learn that failure isn’t a destination,” he says.

“It’s part of a continuum that leads to winning as long as you don’t let it stop you. Failure is part of your training at West Point because the Army needs to know how you handle it. If you can’t handle it at the Academy, how are you going to handle it in battle? If failure beats you in battle, people die.

“If you fail in a basketball game, nobody dies but if you’re going to ultimately succeed, you have to use it to make you better. When something bad happens, you don’t stay there, you figure out how to put it behind you and NOT fail the next time.”

Krzyzewski served in the Army for five years after graduation and was hired by Knight, his old coach at

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Army, as an assistant at Indiana after his retirement from the service. After one season there, he was brought back to his alma mater to fix an ailing basketball program. The Black Knights had gone 3-22 in 1975 and Krzyzewski was brought in to try to restore a program that had gone to the National Invitation Tournament, then just about as prestigious as the NCAA Tournament, seven times between 1961 and 1970.

Krzyzewski was able to turn the program around, winning 20 games and again reaching the NIT in 1978.

His fifth season, however, was a tough one: graduation and injuries dropped the team’s record to 9-17. It was at that point that Duke Athletic Director Tom Butters shocked the world by hiring the 33-year-old Army coach to direct one of college basketball’s best-known programs.

Legend has it that Knight was the person who recommended Krzyzewski to Butters. It wasn’t, in fact Knight was pushing Bob Weltlich, another of his former assistants for the job and encouraged Krzyzewski to take the Iowa State job, which he had been offered.

Krzyzewski decided to ask Col. Tom Rogers, who was his officer representative at the time, what he thought.

“Iowa State’s a good job,” Rogers told him. “But I think Duke is special. You need to ride the Duke thing out.”

Krzyzewski decided to listen to Rogers, who had become a father figure to him when his own dad passed away during his junior year at West Point. In fact, when Rogers retired from the Army, he went to work for Krzyzewski at Duke.

On March 14, 1980, Krzyzewski and Mickie, his wife, visited Duke and Kryzyzewski met with Tom Butters for a third time. When the meeting was over, Butters thanked Krzyzewski for coming and wished him a safe trip home. Krzyzewski left the office baffled, he had thought he was going

to be offered the job.

After the Krzyzewskis had left campus to head to the airport, Steve Vacendak, Duke’s Associate Athletic Director, the man who had first brought Krzyzewski’s name to Butters, asked his boss how the interview with Krzyzewski had gone.

“What are you thinking Tom?” he asked.

“I’m thinking he’s the next great coach in the college game,” Butters said.

“So, you hired him,” Vacendak said.

Butters, who passed away in the spring of 2016, shook his head. “I can’t do it Steve,” he said.

“How can I hire a 33-year-old coach who just went 9 and 17 at Army?”

“If he’s the next great coach,” Vacendak answered. “How can you not hire him?”

Butters stared at Vacendak for a moment. “Go back to the airport and get him,” he said finally.

That night, after Vacendak had pulled Krzyzewski out of line as he was boarding his plane, Duke hired Krzyzewski. The headline in the student newspaper the next day read as follows: “Not a Typo: Krzyzewski.”

“Everyone was expecting me to hire a ‘name’ coach,” Butters said years later. “They didn’t expect a name they couldn’t spell or pronounce.”

For three years, it looked as if that name would be a footnote in Duke history. The Blue Devils were 38-47, the third season ending with a humiliating 109-66 loss to Virginia in the opening round of the ACC Tournament. It was then, very late that night, that Krzyzewski’s West Point education kicked in.

Hours after the loss, sitting in a Denny’s restaurant on the outskirts of Atlanta with some friends, Krzyzewski listened when someone raised a glass of water and said, “Here’s to forgetting tonight.”

Almost red-faced, Krzyzewski

failure to achieve arguably his greatest victory five years later.

“In ’86, we were exhausted after the (national semifinal) game against Kansas,” he says. “Mark Alarie and David Henderson had played every minute and didn’t have their legs on Monday in the championship game.

I just couldn’t find a way to get them the rest they needed.

“Five years later, after we upset (Nevada Las) Vegas in the semis, I was in the same situation with Christian Laettner. He was tired and banged up. So, remembering what had happened against Louisville, I began stealing rest for him right from the start of the game. Every time there was a stoppage at around 16:30 or 12:30 or 8:30 or 4:30, I took him out. I knew that way he’d get an extra minute or more of rest and THEN another two minutes at each TV timeout and I could keep him relatively fresh.”

The strategy worked. Duke won the game – and Krzyzewski’s first national title.

“It was good that I was able to learn that lesson and help our guys win that night in ’91,” he says. “What was too bad was I didn’t learn it in

(L-R) Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight

time to save the ’86 team from a loss it didn’t deserve.”

Krzyzewski is 69 now and has done everything a college basketball coach could hope to accomplish. He long ago surpassed his arch-rival and nemesis, North Carolina’s Dean Smith and Knight, his old mentor. In fact, he has won as many national titles as those two COMBINED and, when he won his fifth title in 2015, he trailed only UCLA’s John Wooden (10) on the all-time list.

“Almost nothing great happens without adversity,” Krzyzewski says, looking at a wall with five banners, one for each national title. “Everyone wants to be on the damn train when you’re winning. The guys who get you there though are the ones who figure out a way to get it moving when it’s stalled.

“Those are the moments when you grow, when you become a better coach and a better person. I learned all of that at West Point.”

Krzyzewski has kicked in all the doors, but he honestly believes he might still be on the outside looking in somewhere if his parents hadn’t spent those nights in the kitchen saying, ‘Mike-stupid, Mike-dumb.’

“I hear people all the time say, ‘A kid has to make his own decisions in life.’ Not always. Sometimes a kid needs to listen to his parents because they’re older and smarter than he is.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not grateful to them or a day when I’m not proud to tell people I’m a graduate of West Point.”

Clearly, William and Emily Krzyzewski knew what they were doing on those June nights more than 50 years ago. They were guiding their son to a place they believed would make him a better man.

But even they had no idea how smart young Mike would turn out to be.

No excuse, Sir. None needed.

★ MISSION FIRST ★

raised his own glass and said: “Here’s to NEVER forgetting tonight.”

Duke beat Virginia the next 16 times the two schools played. But there was more to it than that.

“Sometimes anger plays a role in success too,” Krzyzewski says.

“I was angry that night—with a lot of different people, but more with myself than anything. I had to figure out a way to get the job done. I had to be better and I had to find a way to make my team better. It was pretty simple: we needed to get going. And I was the one responsible for getting that done.”

The first thing a Plebe learns at West Point? Three answers are acceptable when addressing an upperclassman: “Yes, Sir, No, Sir,” and perhaps most importantly, “No excuse, Sir.”

Krzyzewski went into ‘No excuse, Sir,’ mode. He had already changed his recruiting approach after one failed recruiting season. Now, he made changes to his staff and to the way he approached his players.

He came up with four words that he thought were crucial to winning consistently: attitude, belief, prepare and execute.

“You’ve got to have the attitude that there’s a way to do something; a way to win,” he says. “If one way doesn’t work, your attitude has to be, ‘Okay, find another way.’ Then you have to believe you’re going to win.

Attitude and belief help you prepare.

And, once you’ve done all that, you have to execute.”

In Krzyzewski’s fourth season, Duke was 24-10. Two seasons later, the five seniors who had gone 11-17 as freshmen went 37-3 as seniors and went to the Final Four. That group embodied Krzyzewski’s philosophy that failure isn’t a destiny, just part of the continuum.

That team’s National Championship game loss to Louisville is perhaps Krzyzewski’s greatest regret as a coach. He blames himself, ‘No excuse, Sir,’ but also used that

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2nd Lt. Max Lenox ★ leading from the front BY kevin gleason

★ MISSION FIRST ★

There would seem to be only one starting point for Maxwell Lenox. Where else do you begin your story as a black man born to a mom tainted by drugs and alcohol, put up for adoption, fathered by two white gay men and somehow going on to earn a West Point diploma? He can’t exactly save those pieces for the epilogue.

Lenox has no problem recounting his story, told vividly and beautifully by Sports Illustrated magazine in November 2014. He is forever prideful of and thankful for his upbringing, for his parents, Dave Lenox and Nathan Merrells, for his gifts both on and off the basketball court. Yet he’s quick to note that his tale includes other starting points, other potential landmines that required extraordinary determination in his remarkable journey to the graduation stage of the United States Military Academy.

So we start here, freshman year at West Point, 2011, a high school basketball star feeling the depths of Division I basketball while trying to navigate one of the harshest academic struggles in America. He will go on to make the Patriot League AllRookie team, become one of two Army freshmen to play in all 30 games, start seven contests and lead the team in assists (3.2) and steals (1.3). It won’t be enough to keep him in the starting lineup. The demotion coincides with Lenox’s grades slipping. Wait, no, let’s back it up a bit and start here, along the playgrounds and AAU courts in and near Fairfax, Va., where Max Lenox is the fiercest force in the game.

“He was interesting because he was more mature, body-wise,’’ Mo Williams says in describing Max’s blend of size and skills as a sixth-grader. “He was a problem.

He was really tough to guard. My (AAU) coach didn’t worry about anyone else. All he focused on was trying to stop Max.’’

And Lenox often was unstoppable. Williams knew, because long before they became best friends and eventual West Point schoolmates and teammates, he tried to guard Lenox virtually every weekend in tournaments. He still thinks of the picture of them as part of an all-tourney team that shows Lenox’s man-child physique compared to kids his age.

“I started playing on a ‘rec’ team at six-years-old, in first grade,’’ Lenox remembers. “I really fell in love with it in third grade, fourth grade. That’s when I started working my butt off. I was a better tennis player, but I didn’t work hard at tennis.’’

In fact Lenox was immediately good in every sport he tried, except basketball.

He was, his words, “awful’’ at basketball when he first started. But that only drew Lenox closer to the game and made him more determined to thrive at it. His body continued to mature and Lenox sweated through his hardcourt flaws.

“Moving on, it was the competition I loved,’’ he says. “I loved to fight against myself to be better. I loved all the fighting aspects necessary to win the game.’’

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He wasn’t just good by the time he hit the AAU circuit. He was tough.

The AAU scene is often a show of naturally talented kids flying through the air for rim-jarring dunks, uberathletes stopping on a dime for perfect pull-up jumpers and gliding across passing lanes for sudden steals, all with just their feet touching the floor.

Then there was Lenox, who couldn’t resist kissing any crevice on the court that was surrounded by a basketball rolling aimlessly amid a group of bodies. He dived and skidded along the floor like a boy testing his new sled at first snowfall. Body be damned, there was a possession at stake, a ball to be grasped, a game to be won.

A life to be lived.

There was something else burning inside of Lenox beside the ripe raspberries earned through his gritty play. Boys will be boys, and kids will be kids, and too often adults will be children, so there were sadly inevitable barbs and verbal blows when you are raised by two gay men, and of a different color at that. Lenox felt compelled to raise his fists on more than one occasion, but by the time he was ruling high school courts and the words fading mostly to whispers, he was raising something else: awareness.

Fairfax was a melting pot of contrasting demographics, in many ways an ideal environment for Lenox. He gravitated toward kids of all colors and ethnicities, all shapes and sizes, all clubs and cliques and sports. He stood up to bullies who focused their ignorance on others, knowing the feeling, the hurt, of gut-wrenching words. Yet he rarely revealed his pain, to Williams or anyone else, for Lenox seemed to recognize a cause greater than himself.

As kids started to catch up to Lenox on the court physically, he was setting himself apart as a leader of men. He had a long ways to go,

of course, still mostly fixated on winning basketball games. He didn’t see his special leadership qualities taking him to the ultimate leadership academy. Only a small percentage of kids make West Point their childhood dream. Lenox had visions of a more common boyhood fantasy, stopping at a big-time basketball school on his way to the pros. He might not have been cut out for the best of the best such as Duke or Kentucky, not as a 6’0’’ guard lacking otherworldly athleticism. But pretty much everyone else wanted him on their campus. Influential basketball eyes studied Lenox and recruiting letters flooded in from around the country.

Then he suffered a torn meniscus weeks before junior year at WT Woodson High. Lenox barely got onto the court that season and college basketball programs lost his address.

He responded with a big senior season, averaging 22.8 points, 6.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists before earning league Player of the Year honors. Lenox’s grades, though, were mostly “Cs” and he had missed the crucial recruiting window while recovering from his knee injury as a junior. Lenox wound up at Fork Union Military Academy in rural Virginia, where he met the school’s fourdecade coach, Fletcher Arritt.

Arritt became nothing short of a third father to Lenox. The coach helped guide the boy on and off the court, teaching him how to play, for sure, but also instilling in Lenox the power of perspective and purpose.

Lenox led FUMA to a 26-7 season.

Arritt’s sound relationship with West Point allowed Lenox another chance at Division I hoops, albeit on a smaller scale while taking six-syllable courses and marching with 50-pound backpacks strapped onto his broad shoulders.

“He showed me what I wanted to be as a man,’’ Lenox says. “As a leader, he was probably the best leader I have ever been under.’’

West Point freshman year.

Another starting point. Max was having a credible season on his way to making the Patriot League AllRookie team. Coach Zach Spiker was clearly impressed by the kid’s ability to lead teammates on the court.

But Spiker had spent considerable time in other teen-aged living rooms across America, having stored a star recruiting class at the USMA Prep School while Lenox made his Army debut as a freshman. But now, with those freshmen still a season from joining the team, Spiker still saw fit to replace Lenox in the starting lineup.

Meantime Lenox, an undisciplined student, started sliding toward the brink of dismissal.

He struggled all first semester but crammed when necessary and maintained at least a C-minus average in all his courses entering finals. Then Lenox fumbled the basketball in academic crunch time, failing three finals. He flunked two classes, got a “D” in another and soon learned the fate common to many West Point freshmen. He would have to repeat his freshman year, known in Academy vernacular as being “turned back.”

“My whole world was crashing,’’ he says. “My time management was awful because I never put school first. I put basketball first. It had opened all these doors for me, so I focused on it.’’

Lenox considered transferring to another school.

His phone rang. It was Fletcher Arritt, enduring a battle known as cancer, sharing 70 years of knowledge and perspective and belief. His words might now sound like basic concepts, but they were being delivered by a mountain of a man, the kind of man Max would emerge from a foxhole to save.

Never get too high; never get too low, the sage told Max. You can do this, I know you can.

Max repeated his freshman year and discovered the proper balance

leadership skills.

All the while, his numbers and minutes remained miniscule. Lenox averaged 1.7 points and 6.0 minutes in 11 games off the bench his junior season.

With the 2014-15 season essentially a redshirt season – cut short to seven games because of an injury – he came back in 2015-16 to play in just three games and 10 total minutes, scoring six points with seven rebounds and no assists his senior season.

Yet he was voted a captain by teammates both of his final two seasons, and Army, forever a Patriot League doormat, went a combined 34-29, reaching the league tournament semifinals senior year.

You can virtually see Spiker shaking his head in awe over the telephone when asked of Lenox’s influence on teammates. You don’t pick leaders, Spiker suggests. Leaders are born.

Mo Williams, Lenox’s buddy from Fairfax, was a captain alongside Max his junior year. With Williams having graduated and become an athletic intern (known as graduate assistants at civilian schools) for Lenox’s senior season, Mo sat in on

player discussions over their choice of captains. “There were seven (seniors) and they probably were all worthy of being captains,’’ Williams says. “Max stood out because he had the ability to connect with others.

He had the ability to connect with anybody on the team.’’

Lenox has trouble mustering the words to describe the day in May 2016 when he stepped onto stage for his West Point diploma. “I didn’t really have any emotions when I was walking across the stage,’’ he says.

“Then I saw my parents and they were crying, and I started to cry. …

It was awesome. Obviously they did an amazing job; they overcame a lot and we’ve overcome a lot as a family.

We all helped each other get through everything.”

He was sitting at home in Seattle, where his parents had moved in 2014, awaiting the next step in his military career. Lenox would head back to West Point in July to assist in Cadet Basic Training, Beast Barracks, for incoming freshmen. He would go to basic training in August and begin Ranger School in March 2017. Max figures to be deployed in 2018.

“I better be ready when the time comes,’’ he’s saying. “I really have to take my training seriously. I have to get better every single day.’’

Another starting point. Max chose Infantry after first picking Armor as his military branch. He switched branches after a “threestar” general named Robert Brown, a former Army basketball standout in his own right, provided this analogy: Do you want to be on the court, or do you want to sit on the bench?

Easy answer. Easy decision.

Max was born to be in the front.

Basketball is just a game.

★ MISSION FIRST ★

between basketball and books. In a perfect world, where kids are born to healthy moms, where bigotry and homophobia and all forms of hate cease to exist, Max Lenox would have regained his starting spot as a sophomore, led Army to a couple NCAA Tournament berths and worked off his postgraduate military commitment while getting a shot at the pros. But the prep-school studs arrived and Lenox played his entire sophomore season off the bench, averaging 1.7 points and 1.4 rebounds. Another starting point.

While Lenox still treasured the game, he no longer needed it.

Lenox had learned that with each dip into adversity came the light of a guiding beam. There was, first and foremost, Dave Lenox and Nathan Merrells angelically dropping in to provide a structured home after he was put up for adoption.

There was the miracle of developing into a healthy child after absorbing the remnants of his birth mother’s vices during pregnancy. There were kids through his high school years cheering Lenox and tucking the cruel barbs into a distant slaughterhouse.

There was a brilliant woman at West Point named Dr. Angela Fifer, an instructor with a student assistance center called the Center for Enhanced Performance, sharing her wisdom that convinced Lenox to stay at the Academy when he wavered on multiple occasions. And there was Fletcher Arritt, a man 50 years his senior, similarly pulling up Lenox when he considered transferring.

All those lessons. All those models. Now Lenox was accomplishing the remarkable task of making teammates and classmates better despite playing sparingly his final three seasons.

“He probably kept a lot of people there,’’ Williams says.

He doesn’t just mean keeping them focused on the court. He means keeping them from leaving West Point with his mind-altering

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2nd Lt. Kelsey Minato ★ ONE OF A KIND

BY WAYNE COFFEY

★ MISSION FIRST ★

High over the Hudson River, 3,000 miles from the beach town she calls home, Second Lieutenant Kelsey Minato arrived at West Point four years ago with a thoroughly humble agenda for her new life as an Army point guard.

“I was hoping to get a couple of minutes a game and do whatever the team needed and hopefully provide a spark,” Minato says.

Minato smiles, as if to acknowledge how profoundly she underestimated herself. Those couple of minutes morphed into the most prolific career in the annals of Army West Point basketball, making Kelsey Minato – sharpshooting anchor of a team that went 29-3 in her senior season – the greatest basketball player to come out of a service academy since Navy’s David Robinson.

It is not a shabby body of work for a player with such an unimposing physique that her former Army West Point coach, Dave Magarity, says, “She looks like a CYO kid.”

Minato majored in Environmental Science, and minored in torching opponents.

Her resume includes a West Point-record 2,556 points; a career scoring average of 20.1 points per game; and three Patriot League Player of the Year Awards, as she established herself as one of the most formidable three-point shooters in college basketball.

In Minato’s four years, Army had an aggregate record of 99-28, by far the most dominant run of play in almost four decades of West Point women’s basketball.

Minato wasn’t the only reason why, but she was the biggest one.

In the summer of 2014, she even had a memorable three-point shooting contest against Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors, perhaps the most accomplished long-range shooter in the history of the NBA. Curry and his Team USA mates visited West Point with noted alum, Mike Krzyzewski, Team USA coach and former point guard for Bobby Knight. Curry scored a narrow victory, but Krzyzewski ruled that he’d stepped on the line and declared Minato the winner.

Nothing Minato does surprises Magarity any more.

“It’s an incredible story,” the coach says.

Minato believes the greatness that was forged in Christl Arena had everything to do with the culture she was surrounded by.

“I still get chills knowing that I walked the same grounds as so many former great Americans,” Minato says. “West Point has proven to me what parents usually tell their kids; you can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it and work hard.”

Branched in the Signal Corps, Minato began her five-year commitment in Fort Sill, Okla., departing shortly after graduation in May, getting a full immersion in howitzers, rockets and all aspects of Field Artillery. From there she was scheduled

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to be assigned to Fort Carson, Colo., and ultimately, the Signal Corps. She seems unfazed by the uncertainty in her future, and the prospect of deployment overseas. It is, after all, what she has spent four years training for. Her family’s long history of military service – Minato’s greatgrandfather and grandfather served in World War I and II, and her father, Rick Minato, wanted to enlist in the Army before a childhood eye injury disqualified him – gives her much more of a grounding in service life than most people her age.

“It might be a little scary not knowing what’s going to happen, but to me that’s one of the things that’s exciting – not knowing. I’ll see what opportunities come my way,” she says. “I am sure there will be many challenges ahead and I am confident that West Point has prepared me to

meet those challenges.”

Minato’s hallmarks on the court were her sneaky, slashing drives and slingshot-style jumper, along with a keen awareness of everything happening on the court. More than anything, though, she was a player who completely embraced the concept of team, to the point that she would routinely be embarrassed by all the attention and awards that came her way.

What about Aimee Oertner, Army’s All-Patriot League center?

She was the one who set the screens and blocked the shots and hauled down the rebounds. What about her backcourt mate, Janae McNeal, who made steals and looked for Minato on the break? What about all the contributions up and down the roster and coaching staff that went into those 29 victories (a West

Point record) in 2015-16, and a trip to the second round of the NCAA Tournament?

“They’ve probably put in more work and I’m the one on the receiving end,” Minato says of her teammates. “I hope they know how grateful I am for what they’ve done to help me achieve what I’ve been able to achieve.”

Says Oertner, “It’s an honor to play with someone who’s going to go down in history.”

A native of Huntington Beach, Calif., the 5’8’’ Minato had a stellar prep career, but didn’t draw widespread Division I recruiting interest, owing to concerns about her slight build and lack of dazzling athleticism. Magarity liked what he saw of Minato on film, but wasn’t completely sold until he saw her in a California state playoff game against

a powerhouse team from San Diego.

Ironically, Minato’s parents actively tried to dissuade Magarity from attending, worried that Minato and her team might be physically overmatched.

“She hit seven threes in the first half,” Magarity says. “I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got to put this kid in my suitcase and bring her home with me.’

“What makes her so good, even when she’s not scoring, is that she creates so many openings for everybody else, because everybody is so worried about her.”

With her family’s military pedigree and her own thirst for challenge, Minato was undaunted by the rigors she knew she would face at West Point. She loved the diversity of her fellow cadets, and says she never once longed for a more traditional college life, though she admits that by the time she was named honorable mention AllAmerican in her senior year, the idea of playing professional basketball in the WNBA held some allure. She was invited to training camp with the San Antonio Stars not long after the NCAA Tournament, but wound up being cut.

“The WNBA experience was great and I am so fortunate and grateful that I was given the opportunity to try out. I learned things that I think I can bring with me to the Army that will make me a

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Rick and Dorothy Minato flank their sharpshooting daughter, Kelsey.

better leader,” Minato says.

Minato had the surreal experience of playing her final games in Christl Arena with her uniform number – 5 – hanging over her, from the rafters. She is the first West Point athlete to be so honored while still at the Academy. Dave Magarity, for his part, believes the best is yet to come for Kelsey Minato, former undersized stealth bomber behind the threepoint line, current Second Lieutenant in the United States Army.

“Kelsey never took anything for granted. She never got caught up thinking she was better than she was,” Magarity says. “It’s part of her DNA, her value system from her family, her drive and competitiveness.”

Kelsey Minato, who did a little more than get a few minutes a game, pauses and reflects on her time at West Point.

“It’s been a great four years,” she says.

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Maj. Chrissy O’Hara ★ rolling with the punches BY ally keirn

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It is hard to wrap your head around something that brings you pain and suffering during your senior year at the U.S. Military Academy in the midst of your final season on the softball field, especially as your team heads to its second NCAA Tournament. Yet, everything in life happens for a reason. Those reasons may not always reveal themselves until years later down the path of life, but rolling with the punches, bending your knees and keeping your head up will indeed lead you down the right path.

Maj. Chrissy O’Hara, M.D., who jokes that West Point was easier than childhood, knew that the U.S. Military Academy was the place for her. Her family comes from a long military tradition of service and West Point satisfied the family tradition and her goal to attend a college that would fully challenge her in all aspects of life and raise her to her highest potential.

Throughout her childhood, she was surrounded by the military lifestyle. Her father had been awarded the Purple Heart (2) and Distinguished Flying Cross (2) while in Vietnam. O’Hara was the middle sibling of two brothers and they were all instilled with the same principles. These codes of conduct mandated “treating people right” as their top priority, that they owed it to their fellow Americans to pay it back and that people with thick skin needed to protect other people.

“Growing up as kids we had a stark reality of what life was,” says O’Hara. “That was how we were brought up. My mom was a refugee from communist Hungary. She didn’t speak a word of English when she arrived, but learned it. She then obtained her Ph.D in Psychology. She told me that education was power and that I needed to get into a great college in order to help others at a larger scale.”

It could be these core principles that influenced all three of the O’Hara children to attend three different service academies. Her older brother, Lt. Col. Thomas Peter O’Hara, was the first who made the decision and went to the U.S. Air Force Academy.

He entered the Space and Missiles track from there. He now holds the lives of our sons and daughters quietly in his safe keeping.

Chrissy chose the U.S. Military Academy and her younger brother, William George O’Hara, went to the U.S. Naval Academy. William, or “Bill” worked at the Pentagon in Information and Technology while simultaneously taking night classes at George Washington University Law school. Although he has his degree in Patent Law and is now a civilian, he continues to work with IT at the strategic level. His wife, Samantha Jo O’Hara, is a nuclear engineer and prior Naval officer. Together they both work to keep the America, that Tom is strategically shielding, running well internally.

When O’Hara’s parents dropped her off on the banks of the Hudson for

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Reception Day, the words of her father were what stuck with her most throughout the 47-month journey.

He simply told her to finish what she started.

During her time at West Point, O’Hara was an outstanding four-year starter on the Army softball team.

She made a true impact, and served as the Brigade Honor Secretary within the U.S. Corps of Cadets.

“She was a young lady that lived on the edge and I mean that in the most positive manner,” explains 19-year Army softball head coach Jim Flowers. “She was always willing to take risks for the betterment of others and herself. She set her goals and standards very high. And therefore she took the risks to meet them.”

O’Hara became a role model to her teammates by leading by example. Back then, the team would get its conditioning in before practice by running the two miles to Buffalo Soldier Field where the softball field was located. Flowers would then drive them back, but O’Hara did not always opt for the van rides.

“Chrissy on occasion would run back to the barracks,” he says.

“She would do that more times than riding in the van because she felt she

didn’t get enough running in. Those are the kind of characteristics that Chrissy had. Pretty soon I wouldn’t even need the van down there except for emergencies. Chrissy was that kind of leader. She came with natural leadership characteristics and developed those further up until graduation. She was ready to be a Platoon Leader and lead in the Army.”

Softball was only part of O’Hara’s focus while at the Academy, however. The coaches never had to worry about her grades or tests because as Flowers puts it, “She was there for the right reasons.”

When it came time to rank her branch choices her senior year, she consulted her father. O’Hara had considered the possibility of Medical School and the Medical Corps, but her father reminded her that she was on a successful Division I program, was starting and also had responsibilities in the Corps of Cadets so it may not have been the right time to pursue her medical aspirations.

Then September 11, 2001 happened.

She recalls how the toughness of the U.S. Military Academy shone through the smoke from the Twin

O’Hara (far left) helped Army to a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances during her playing days at West Point.

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Towers that hovered over the West Point campus.

O’Hara then had another conversation with her most trusted confident, her father. He reminded her that she owed it to her country and needed to pay it back. He also told her that she went to West Point for a reason and that reason was to protect other people. He told her, “I understand that being a doctor does that, but people with thick skin need to go to war and that is what I raised you with.”

So when she ripped open that sealed envelope on Branch Night, her top choice of Military Intelligence Corps, was staring back at her.

Being a 2002 graduate, O’Hara and her classmates were the first class since Desert Storm to commission into a period of war or conflict. However, that did not deter her.

Her thick skin is likely one of the attributes that helped O’Hara excel as a cadet and as a softball player under Flowers. She claims that being a member of the team thickened her skin even more.

“Coach Flowers was straightlaced and to the point,” she recalls.

“If you didn’t run through a base, you bought yourself his growl and a run to the fence. There was always a consistent consequence for your actions. In life, unlike the game, I have had some unexpectedly hard consequences that I didn’t buy…chance handed them to me.

However, the game’s teachings are vital because I handle the consequences just the same; by rolling with the punches. It is not about you, it is about everyone else.

“Remember your morals, your faith and your family. That and flexibility will get you through the storm.”

With one Patriot League championship and one NCAA Tournament appearance under her belt, O’Hara and her teammates began the 2002 season with equal

situation turned out to be a positive one for O’Hara.

“Even after getting hurt, she was able to go on the trip and was the best cheerleader we could have ever asked for. She stayed right with the players and became another assistant coach for me. She turned the negative into a positive. She was still upbeat and didn’t miss a lick.”

That change helped O’Hara on her path to selfless service while serving in the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer and now as a physician. She confesses that her time overseas is what truly reminded her that she wanted to be a doctor.

“There were times that we were in firefights or were first responders pulled off another mission and I did not have the expertise to help with the wounded,” O’Hara recalls. She explains that all she knew was to hold the wound which led her to wonder what threat shift she had missed.”

The threat-tippers and intelligence world on an active battlefield are constantly shifting.

“I realized that intelligence is an imperfect science,” she says. “It morphs and changes, but the human body does not. Saving a life is more in my control. I had my brothers keeping the enemy from the gate.

Shouldn’t I be the one sustaining what’s inside the people they are already protecting?

“That was a really big push for me to go into medicine. I still deal with the ‘Intel’ world, but first and foremost I am a physician. Being deployed taught me a lot, but what doesn’t.”

O’Hara began studying for medical school around her time as a Platoon Leader in Iraq. After returning from deployment, she joined the ranks of the Medical Corps and transitioned back into school. She was the Class President of her medical class for four years at East Tennessee State University.

For someone who chose West Point for the challenge, O’Hara confesses

that her time at medical school was meant to be a break for her.

“I wanted to suck the marrow out of life while at West Point and that is how I continue to live,” she explains. “No matter what you can, or can’t do, you just have to roll with it. You’ve got to find a way even if it’s not the way you wanted, you’ve got to help people.”

Those who enter the gates at the U.S. Military Academy understand the deep roots of selfless service and the importance of the oaths they take on Reception Day, Affirmation Day and Graduation Day.

To some, selfless service is putting others first. To individuals that graduate from West Point, the preeminent leadership institution in the world, selfless service is giving everything you have to help other people while expecting little to nothing in return, and then even when you have little left of yourself you keep on giving. To O’Hara, selfless service is not just an oath, it is her way of life.

In keeping with that sentiment, O’Hara married Michael “Terry” Lucas. He perpetuates that way of life as well. Terry played football during his undergraduate days at the University of South Florida and is a U.S. Navy veteran, previously serving on nuclear submarines.

“I married Terry because we had the same morals, commitment to Catholicism, and views on family,” says O’Hara. “He may even root for Army during Army- Navy games.”

As she looks forward to her newest journey as Terry’s wife, Aria’s mother and a doctor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, O’Hara continues on with her selfless service to other people.

“I have learned that there is nothing more precious in life than other people,” states O’Hara. “And I’ll be damned if I can’t preserve that.”

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end goals. However, O’Hara’s playing days came to an abrupt end during her senior season. While sliding into second base, her hand was stepped on and all the bones shattered.

“That broke my heart, but it made me realize that there’s more to life than the game,” recalls O’Hara.

“It was a hard realization.”

Her Division I softball career was over in an instant. She had to watch from the dugout as her classmates and teammates won another conference title and sought out the NCAAs for the second time in three seasons. Looking back, breaking her hand and watching her team win from the sidelines was a pivotal moment in her life.

“That broken hand really did change my perspective on life,” she confesses. “I loved running down to practice every day, I loved competing. It was all taken away in a moment when I least expected it. It was especially hard at the indestructible age of 21. I couldn’t imagine life without contributing to softball and boom – all of a sudden the X-Ray showed my hand shattered.

Just as 9/11 catalyzed change for the United States, I had to lift and shift fire as well. Forcing my energy to become potential for a few months then, changed my life now, 14 years later, for the better.

“There have been some unexpected and significantly hard times in my life, but I remembered how I was given a very good crack at almost the same exact thing before with my teammates surrounding me.

You understand how to surmount something like a blow to your pride and capabilities with dignity.

Inevitably we are all going to leave the game, but that gave me the surest revelation that it is completely not all about me. Still face down, stretched out with my left hand palm down on second base, I realized this as the dust was still settling. I had to shift, pivot and move on.”

As Flowers recalls, that negative

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Chris Perry ★ the answer man BY mady salvani

★ MISSION FIRST ★

You might see Chris Perry wandering around the hallowed grounds of the United States Military Academy. It could be along the sidelines of Michie Stadium, inside the Kimsey Athletic Center, at the Hoffman Press Box or at any of the other picturesque places at West Point.

What is he doing, you might ask? Trying to find solutions.

Perry has held diverse positions over the past 30-plus years as a member of the Army Athletic Association (AAA), and he thrives on addressing the ever-changing challenges of technology.

His career began in 1983 as an intern in the Army Athletic Ticket Office when ticketing was done manually. Perry had recently completed his master’s degree in Sports Administration at Temple University.

Perry, who had originally worked in the field of health administration for six years after earning his degree in Business Administration from Juniata College in 1972 and an MBA from Temple in 1976, changed his career course to athletic administration. This was a new field that colleges and universities had introduced which immediately became an attractive option for many students and would be beneficial to schools across the country.

Perry found his niche in his return to athletics, a field that he grew up in and thrived. During his collegiate career, he earned four varsity letters in both football and track and field and was the recipient of Juniata’s Stanford Mickle Award, presented to the school’s outstanding senior athlete.

Frank Walker, who was Army’s business manager, was a Temple graduate who reached out to his alma mater when Bill Crim, the Army ticket manager, was looking for interns for the upcoming football season.

After making the trip to West Point for an interview with Crim and Army Athletic Director Carl Ullrich, Perry was hired and began a new chapter in his life that July. He would later say that he wished he had done that earlier in his career.

“I worked in the ticket office selling tickets and AAA memberships,” Perry says, “and then would join Bill Crim and Carol Bush (who became the ticket manager when Crim retired in 1985) allotting tickets. I would also oversee the cadet ushers on game days.”

“We took orders over the phone and in person,” explains Perry. “With the success of the football program under Jim Young resulting in postseason bids to the Cherry Bowl in 1984 and the Peach Bowl in 1985, we were selling out games and our workload was becoming overwhelming.”

Perry went to Crim and asked if he could look into a computerized system.

Paciolan was one of the companies he reached out to and the firm came in for a demonstration. The athletic department was also looking into accounting and recruiting packages for football.

“Several folks then went out to Paciolan’s headquarters in Irvine, Calif., to look at football along with game analysis software,” says Perry. “We started that in 1986

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and changed our format in the ticket office a year later. Since then Paciolan became Spectra which today provides services to more than 100 colleges and universities across the country, including all three service academies.”

There are the usual problems when you incorporate a new system, especially going from manual with all the information laid out on paper in front of you to an electronic one with multiple systems that monitor inventory, track sales and optimize events in record time.

“I worked with Chris helping set up the system, the priority seating and general seating and the type of reports that we needed to generate,” explains Bush. “But he was the one who implemented it. It was a team effort with everyone in the ticket office working towards making things

more efficient and fan friendly.”

“We did not have personal computers then, basically we had what we called a ‘dumb terminal,’” explains Perry. “It was connected to the main structure and we used that to log on to the ticketing system. We took orders, allocated tickets and printed them in-house. It gave us more up-to-date information.”

After four years as a member of the ticket office, Perry, who was named Assistant Athletic Director in January 1987, transitioned to overseeing computers in the athletic department. Though he still continued working with Paciolan, other projects and challenges were beckoning.

At that time, very few offices had laptops as word processers and typewriters were still utilized for doing reports, recruiting letters,

forms and media guides. Today, everybody from administrators to coaches to secretaries have personal computers on their desks, but these were not as available in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Perry was not the first person in the athletic department to be involved with computers, but he quickly assimilated himself to this new challenge after Col. Wayne Graham, the Deputy Director of Athletics, saw the importance and future of technology. Network installation was the first step in connecting personal computers throughout the athletic department.

It was through Graham’s efforts, along with Perry and others, that the Army Athletic Association entered the new age of technology. While many embraced it, others struggled with it. But Perry was available

indispensable Chris is to our operation,” says Rich DeMarco, Assistant Athletic Director for MultiMedia and Broadcasting. “Simply put, without him, we would not have been able to launch and maintain our live event schedule. From setup to breakdown, Chris can be counted on to do whatever it takes to get the job done. He has been able to evolve his talents in order to keep up with the changing dynamics of live webcasts.”

DeMarco, who serves as Army’s play-by-play voice for the football and men’s basketball teams, lauds Perry, who has served as the lead producer for the video webcasts the past nine years. His responsibilities include equipment setup, and producing the telecasts.

“From where we started back in 2007, with one camera and no graphics on events, to how the technology has changed, Chris truly has grown up with Knight Vision,” notes DeMarco.

“Chris is truly someone who has top-to-bottom knowledge of everything technical on the multimedia side. Whether it be internet connections, phone lines, equipment setup, camera and technical equipment purchasing and repair, there really isn’t any aspect of what we do for which he doesn’t have an intimate knowledge. I also think what makes Chris special is that he’s an exemplary human being, who not only cares deeply about his job, but also cares for the people around him.”

In addition to a multitude of duties with Knight Vision, the scoreboards and sound system, Perry is also the Contracting Officer’s Representative for the phone system for the athletic department.

Another area that Perry was engaged in was Audiovisual assets, where he helped former director of sports photography Harry Kubasek transition football film to video film.

“I didn’t get involved with the cameras, but worked with him on the

non-linear editing of the video. Now it is just linear because everything is digital, and it is amazing what they can do.

“Harry and his folks would shoot football practice on video tape and would go back and give it to coaches who wanted different scenarios. I would help Harry with some of the analyses that coaches wanted.”

Perry’s father and uncles served in the U.S. Army; his father with the Army Air Corps in World War II. His time at West Point has made him appreciate not only their sacrifices for the nation but also the cadets he has come in contact with over the years.

Life throws out challenges, and Perry was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. Consistent with his professional approach to things, he did his research, selected his doctors and the hospital and today remains cancer-free. He was the first person honored by the Army hockey team’s “House of Blues” promotion in raising prostate cancer awareness when he dropped the puck in Army’s game against Canisius in 2012.

As Perry heads into his 35th year as a member of Army’s athletic department, he can look back proudly on all the projects he has been involved in at every athletic facility.

You might wonder how he had the time to accomplish all he has done. But for Perry the excitement of each project is finding a solution and that excitement is something he will never tire of.

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night and day and a phone call to his office, even as late as 11 p.m., was answered.

He might have been working on one of his many projects, but he quickly put it aside to offer assistance whether it is a question that he could answer over the phone or one that required a visit to the office to help someone with a problem.

Before long, the Office of Information Technology was formed and started expanding as the needs of the athletic department increased with the acquisition of computers for everyone’s desk.

Another project, with a challenge for Perry, was the installation of a high-definition video board in the north end zone of Michie Stadium in 2008. The entire stadium sound system was also reengineered and upgraded.

Right in the midst of that project was the installation of the scoreboard and training operators.

Perry oversaw the job with the vendor (Daktronics), starting with the contract, installation and training operators. He was also involved in the upgrading of the acoustics, which certainly made for many long days and nights.

After helping set up the high definition scoreboard in Michie Stadium, Perry was in charge of the installation of a similar video scoreboard at Tate Rink, home of the Army hockey team, along with the sound system at Christl Arena, home of Army’s men’s and women’s basketball squads.

Prior to the start of those projects, Perry was at the forefront of Knight Vision, a service that provides live audio and video streaming of home athletic events and press conferences.

“The best part for me is being at the games,” reveals Perry. “We have three cameras and my job is switching angles to get them shown on the screen.”

“I cannot tell you how

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Kim and Josh Sembrano ★ a TIE THAT BONDS BY ally keirn

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Sports matter. You can’t fathom how much sports matter until you have to lean on them to get you through tough times. Sports develop more than just skills and discipline, sports develop character, friendships, families and lifestyles.

Swimming is the sport that matters to the Sembrano family. It bonded them together in the best of times and kept them moving forward during the worst of times.

With a father that was both dad and coach and a mother who was a constant cheerleader and support beam, Kim and Josh Sembrano have seen swimming as a family affair since they were nine and 10 years old, respectively.

The two confessed that their father Ruben pushed them into swimming, but reflecting on their time in the sport, they have full appreciation for it.

“Even though sometimes it was annoying and we sometimes had thoughts of leaving the sport, once we matured, we understood how important it was to us and how it developed us into better people,” Kim says.

“There’s no way I could be where I am today without my dad,” Josh reflects.

“Like in every sport, there are times when you want to quit and have a normal childhood and hang out with friends, but he made sure I knew what the right priorities were.”

Josh and Kim could never know that sticking with swimming would one day help them through one of the toughest moments of their lives.

Just a few months into Josh’s Plebe year at the U.S. Military Academy, the family’s world was turned upside down by news that would impact their lives forever.

On Oct. 28, 2014, Ruth Sembrano, mother of Josh, Kim and younger sister, Rebecca, passed away suddenly.

“I remember Josh called me during the week and asked if he could go home because his mom was sick,” says Army head coach Mickey Wender. “Then I received a call over the weekend telling me that she had passed. It was sudden and shocking.

Nobody had any idea that this was coming.”

The team was there to support Josh and the family when they needed it. This, above all, was important to Wender, who also lost his mother at a young age.

“As a team, we are a family,” says Wender with a sense of pride. “We just try to be there for each other and support each other. We wanted to be there for the Sembranos through that tough time in their lives. The team was there to support Josh and the family when they needed it.”

The full roster of the Army West Point swimming and diving team made their way to Northern New Jersey for the wake. And, even though Josh was the only Sembrano that was a member of the team at that point, he wasn’t the only one who

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★ MISSION FIRST ★ was affected by the team’s support.

“The first time I met the whole team was actually at my mother’s wake,” admits Kim. “I was surprised that every single one of them came.

When I first saw them, that’s when it hit me that it was just the type of team that Army is.”

“I didn’t even know my teammates that well yet,” adds Josh. “Honestly, I knew the team for less than a month, but still they all showed up for me and my family.” ★★★

Coach Wender knew right away that he wanted Josh on his swimming team. He was a year ahead of Kim in school and had shown interest in the Academy, but wasn’t sure until meeting with Wender after the Junior Nationals meet in Irvine, Calif.

“To this day I remember watching Josh swim and thinking this is a kid that I want on our team,” Wender says. “I met with him after the Junior Nationals meet by the bleachers and I just remember how proud his parents were and tears welling up in their eyes as I offered him a spot.”

It was much the same for Josh.

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“It was my family and I standing talking to coach Wender after the meet when I looked him square in the eye and said, ‘Coach, I want to go to your school. If you can offer me a spot I will take it.’ He looked right back at me and asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’ and I responded, ‘Yes, 100 percent.’”

Wender’s interest in Kim grew throughout the process, but at the beginning, her eyes were set on other schools.

“I knew coach Wender was a great coach because I saw what he did when we would attend meets, but the first time he approached me about coming here, I was not interested,” explains Kim.

Both Kim and Josh had moments of doubt about West Point, but the assurance from the Army swimming and diving family made the two realize that the U.S. Military Academy was the right place for them.

“The opportunities you get at West Point, you can’t find anywhere else,” says Josh. “My parents were obsessed with West Point. They are from the Philippines so West Point had a huge impact on how they lived and how the country is now. I knew that I would have a secure future and

would be able to swim under coach Wender so it was a big deal to me.”

Although Kim wasn’t interested at first, the passing of their mother was a turning point in her recruiting process. She attended an official visit at West Point with the swimming and diving team in December of her senior year, and by April was convinced that it was the place at which she needed to be.

“I said, ‘No’ at first and coach Wender understood, but when I came back saying, ‘Yes’ he had open arms,” Kim explains. “He helped with the whole process. I am just so happy that it all worked out honestly.

The other schools that I looked at, I had to compromise either my education or swimming. They were on the opposite ends of the spectrum of West Point. Coming here I had everything that I wanted.”

As for Josh, the team’s attendance at his mother’s wake was the fuel that kept him going forward.

“Being at West Point as a Plebe was really hard,” confesses Josh.

“There were times where I wanted to stop. But after what the team did for me by coming to the wake to show their support, and everyone on the team being so nice and supportive to me during this tough time, I knew that I owed them something.

“They did all this for me and I knew I could do this small thing for them. I could do what I came here to do. That act in October 2014 made me want to stay at West Point.

Honestly, whenever times get tough, I’ll look back to Plebe year or my mom’s wake and think this is nothing compared to that time.”

Fast forward to the spring of 2016 after the Sembranos’ first full year together at the Academy. Josh holds Academy and Plebe records, while Kim is rapidly climbing the all-time top 10 times lists. Both represented Army at the Patriot League Championships.

Although their mother’s passing happened over a year ago, the

support of the team continues to propel them forward.

“Transitioning into ‘Beast’ and Plebe year was terrible for me,” Kim recalls. “I was always tired with a full schedule where I was going back and forth and felt like I didn’t have a place to sit. I would start thinking about Mom when things got hard and then I would get upset.

“When you come to the pool and are upset, everyone talks to you, smiles at you and makes jokes so it is hard to remain upset. It is the swim team that enables me to stay here. I know that I can last here and have a positive attitude about it because of my teammates.”

Josh continues to lean on the team to help push him forward.

“After everything happened, I was at a point where I knew I could just stay in bed or go back home and not do anything, forget school and just focus on myself,” Josh says.

“But the team really helped push me forward. I had nowhere left to go, just forward. The team made sure I knew that whether they did it on purpose or not.

“Understanding that I knew I had to move forward. It’s okay to miss Mom, but I know the team needs me and that my spot is very important. It forces me to go forward. I know I need to swim, and

that I need to do the things that are expected of me.”

And now that the two are on the team together, they can lean on each other.

“The first couple weeks of Plebe year were a little tough on both of us,” says Josh. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay, but she wanted me to leave her alone. I try my best and help her with swimming and getting used to the program, stuff I wished someone had told me.”

Experiencing hardships throughout the process of attending

the U.S. Military Academy and supporting each other through it has enabled Josh and Kim to grow their relationship and become closer.

“I would say we are a lot closer,” Josh says with a big smile. “We were really close growing up, but now we are very close. I have my tough days and it’s easier to talk to Kim more than anyone else here.”

Even though swimming only takes up a fraction of their time, it has impacted the Sembranos indefinitely. It’s is one of the things that has kept the family glued together.

“When Dad was our coach there was always somebody there, and now that we are away from him, we have each other,” Kim says while hugging her big brother. “Now we rely on each other.”

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Doug Van Everen ★ an icon in his field BY mady salvani

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Doug Van Everen just put the finishing touches on his 26th season as Army’s gymnastics head coach, capped by a second straight ECAC Championship and the school’s first Nissen-Emery Award winner.

The senior member of Army’s intercollegiate coaching staff, the affable Van Everen looks back over the years and laughs when he starts explaining how he got into coaching.

The hands of fate were set in motion 30 years ago following a stellar gymnastics career at Cal State Fullerton where he helped his school earn a berth to the 1985 NCAA Tournament before picking up his degree in Physical Education in 1987.

Following the conclusion of his collegiate career, Van Everen was offered a position overseeing a recreation gymnastics school program.

“I really did not intend to be a coach and I was not looking in that direction at all,” he says. “Then one thing led to another and I went basically from being a poor college kid doing part-time jobs to my first real job.”

That job opened doors that a young 22-year-old Van Everen could not have imagined as he would go on to become one of the most respected coaches and administrators in college gymnastics.

Van Everen has mentored several NCAA All-Americans, two USA Gymnastics collegiate National Champions and 15 ECAC champions who have combined for 29 titles at Army. He has written legislation as President of the College Gymnastics Association and as Chairman of the NCAA Rules Committee and served as a member of the USA Board of Directors just to name a few of his accomplishments in his more than three decades of service.

The Army mentor took a leap of faith in 1987 when the head coaching position at San Jose State University opened. He did not have any collegiate coaching experience, but felt he had nothing to lose by throwing his name into the ring.

Despite his youth, he was offered the head position and spent three years coaching and teaching before there was an announcement that the U.S. Military Academy was looking for a gymnastics coach.

“When the job at West Point opened, I really didn’t know where it was,” explains an embarrassed Van Everen who grew up in Colorado and went to school in California. “I certainly didn’t have any military background to draw upon, so I just threw my name in as I had nothing to lose.”

Once again this young coach was impressive in his interview, augmented by a notable showing of eight wins in his third season at San Jose State. All of that resulted in a job offer and decision time for the Van Everens.

My wife and I ultimately decided to move east. Their young son Kirk, who was then about six-months-old, would later go on to graduate from West Point in 2011.

Kirk and his younger brother Connor would make West Point their home.

“It was different from working at San Jose as there was a lot more structure at West Point, but the athletes were the same.”

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It didn’t take long for Van Everen to put West Point on the map after taking over the program in 1990-91. There was instant success as he guided the Black Knights to third-place honors at the Eastern Intercollegiate Gymnastics League (EIGL) Championships. It marked Army’s best finish since 1986.

His reputation as a tireless recruiter and coach drew the praise of his peers who voted him the 1993 East Regional Coach of the Year, for he was not only a talented coach but he also had organizational creativity.

He would go on to earn several coaching honors, to include four regional citations along with ECAC Coach of the Year in 2015. He shared the title again in 2016 after leading the Black Knights to back-to-back conference titles.

One of Van Everen’s first innovations was the West Point Open which celebrated its 25th season this past winter. He introduced it in 1992

as a tune-up for the Winter Cup. From the onset, it was lauded as one of the elite gymnastics competitions in a field that included members of the U.S. National Team, NCAA All-Americans and champions, along with Eastern League champions.

With over 800 collegiate and club gymnasts participating in Christl Arena for the West Point Open, Van Everen knew how to impress the crowd as he brought in former Olympians, such as John Roethlisberger, Tim Daggett and Blaine Wilson, to demonstrate their skills in various events. Their freeflowing style brought the crowd to its feet as they flew effortlessly through the air with clutch performances to land safely on each turn.

The West Point Open would prove to be the start of the efforts that Van Everen would exhort in developing the program’s support systems over the years.

“One of the things I realized

was the need to involve the alumni more,” Van Everen says. “There was not much alumni involvement. I felt that we had limited resources and I didn’t want to be a burden on the department.”

The only full-time coach in the program when he accepted the Army job, Van Everen felt that whatever needed to be done to promote his team would be accomplished through the alumni.

“My goal was to try to be selfsufficient,” comments Van Everen.

“In that regard, we have a good relationship with our alumni. The West Point Open has given us that kind of exposure and is an asset with recruiting.

“We also started the West Point Gymnastics Club to provide an opportunity for the community to participate in the sport and that also helped build a support network. It provided an opportunity to partially fund an assistant coach position, again making it less of a burden to provide a staff.”

Another groundbreaking endeavor by Van Everen is development of the West Point Gymnastics Endowment. It has been especially rewarding not only monetarily (it has reached nearly two million dollars), but the outreach and communications with the alumni have been the largest benefit. It brings back the rich history of the program as alumni share with today’s gymnasts and future recruits.

The construction of the Gross Sports Center in 2005 brought the program into the national forefront due to the generosity of Lou Gross and Herb Litchenberg along with the efforts of former Army Athletic Director Rick Greenspan and former U.S. Military Academy Superintendent Lt. General Dan Christman.

“They hit a home run providing the program with a gym,” notes an appreciative Van Everen. “It has made a huge difference and has been

he tells recruits – “We are going to put them in a position where they can be successful, and we won’t let them down. It is going to be hard, but I tell them that right away. It would be easier to make the Olympic Team or the National Team if you went to Stanford.

“You can do it but it is a challenge, and we have done it before. When Steve made the Senior National Team, there were a lot of people who said, ‘No way can he do this.’”

Army has had seven Black Knights nominated for the NissenEmery Award (the highest accolade in gymnastics first established in 1966) and this spring Van Everen’s efforts were validated with the selection of Glenn.

“Everyone recognized his greatness. Here is an athlete competing at the same level as the other greats while he is driving a tank in the summer – there is no comparison.”

Former All-American Dustin Greenhill (USMA ’03), who spent two tours of deployment to Iraq, lauds Van Everen for guidance of his gymnastics career at Army, capped

by All-America honors after he earned runner-up laurels on parallel bars at the NCAAs his senior year.

“As a high school recruit, Doug commendably shared with me both his respect for West Point as well as the realistic expectation that high levels of training at the NCAA Division I level are more challenging as a cadet,” Greenhill says. “His honesty resulted in my decision to entrust him with my gymnastics career and, to an extent, my professional development.”

Greenhill is in his fifth year as an orthopedic resident and praises Van Everen for what he instilled in him and his teammates at West Point.

“At West Point, Doug made gymnastics a team sport,” continues Greenhill. “He taught us to fight and not give up. He taught us to overcome adversity in the gym which directly translated to our subsequent military and professional careers.

Doug took our sport seriously, our team seriously, and our competitions seriously.

“Yet, after college Doug remained an excellent mentor and friend. He set a national example within the NCAA community by selflessly establishing an endowment fund that will outlast his term as a coach. In concert with the USMA mission, Doug definitely educated, trained, and inspired us and helped prepare us for a career of professional excellence both in the gym and beyond.”

Van Everen jokes that he is still having fun, and that as long as there is a lot of gas left in the tank, he will continue to inspire and drive a program that has made him an icon in his field.

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awesome for our program. I think the icing on the cake now is just working with Boo Corrigan (Army’s present athletic director). He is just a breath of fresh air. We have had different administrations and different philosophies, but his approach fits well with the way I handle things.”

From the time that Van Everen took over the gymnastics program at West Point, he has been at the forefront of every project and involved in every aspect of the logistics including overseeing setting up equipment and stations for each of the events.

Van Everen showed his ingenuity when he first put in the bid to host the NCAA Tournament in 2005. Army won the bid and Van Everen did what he has done throughout his life – knocked it out of the park. His efforts and success in 2005 resulted in West Point earning hosting duties in 2010 and again in 2017.

“I feel that if we are going to host a championship, we have to do it well for all the kids that come, not only the college competitors, but the little ones and it needs to be one of the most special events that they go to all year long. For the parents, the coaches, the athletes and kids, I want it to look like the Olympics – big and special.”

Van Everen never regretted his decision to take the Army coaching position.

“West Point is a challenging place to be great in any one thing,” Van Everen says. “You look at two of our outstanding athletes I have coached like Steve Marshall and Jesse Glenn. Steve was focused on making the national team while Jesse, our first Nissen-Emery Award winner, concentrated on academics. It is hard to be great in both so you have to make choices.

“West Point gives you the opportunity to compete in the Olympics, but it is a balancing act and there are a lot of demands.”

Van Everen also explains what

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Editorial Contributors Bob Beretta is the Executive Athletic Director at the United States Military Academy. A local product with deep-rooted ties to the Hudson Valley, Beretta is in 16th year on the senior leadership team and 30th overall in West Point’s athletic department. Formerly an award-winning sports information director, Beretta now oversees Army’s hockey, baseball, women’s basketball, men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s track & field programs, among other duties. He also manages Army’s athletic communications, multimedia, broadcasting, operations and sponsorship endeavors.

A graduate of St. Bonaventure University, Beretta is a member of the Football Writers Association of America, U.S. Basketball Writers Association, National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association and the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

Harrison Antognioni is in his fourth year with the Army Athletic Communications staff. He serves as the primary contact for the Black Knights’ men’s soccer, women’s basketball and softball programs. Antognioni arrived at West Point after working as an intern at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., where he assisted with the publicity and media relations of the college’s 21 sports. A graduate of St. Michael’s College, Antognioni also worked with the Burlington Free Press and Green Mountain Rock Crushers, a professional ice hockey team.

Wayne Coffey is a three-time Pulitzer nominee and the author of more than 30 books, including such New York Times bestsellers as “The Boys of Winter,” “The Closer” (co-authored with Yankee legend Mariano Rivera) and “Above The Line” (co-authored with Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer.) His latest book, When “Nobody Was Watching,” a collaboration with World Cup star Carli Lloyd, was published in the fall of 2016.

Matt Faulkner recently finished his second year with the Army Athletic Communications staff and now oversees the area. He serves as the primary contact for the Black Knights’ football and men’s lacrosse programs. Faulkner arrived at West Point after spending four years in the Athletic Communications Office at Colgate University. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Faulkner also worked for three years in the Athletic Communications Office at Dartmouth College and as an intern at St. Michael’s College.

John Feinstein is an award-winning sportswriter, author and sports commentator. The author of 36 books, including “A Civil War: Army vs. Navy” about the Army-Navy rivalry and “The Last Amateurs,” a book about Patriot League basketball, Feinstein is a writer for the Washington Post and hosts a weekly college basketball show on SiriusXM, in addition to his commentary work with the Golf Channel. A graduate of Duke University, Feinstein served as an essayist for CBS Sports Network during the 2013 football season and was featured in Army’s broadcasts.

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Kevin Gleason is the sports editor for the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. An award-winning columnist since 1989, Gleason has covered nearly every sport at West Point, first as a writer and feature author, and later as the paper’s signature columnist. He is a graduate of SUNY Plattsburgh.

Ally Keirn is in her third year with the Army Athletic Communications staff. She serves as the primary contact for the Black Knights’ volleyball, hockey, gymnastics and women’s lacrosse programs. Keirn came to West Point following two years as a graduate assistant in the Athletic Communications Office at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pa., where she completed her master’s degree in Business Administration.

Prior to Bloomsburg, Keirn graduated from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pa., after earning All-America honors on the Mercyhurst women’s lacrosse team.

Mady Salvani is in her 48th year with the Army Athletic Association and is a member of the Black Knights’ Athletic Communications staff. Salvani has filled a myriad of roles and served as the primary contact for men’s and women’s soccer, women’s basketball, gymnastics, rifle and softball programs, among others. She is currently the Director of Research and Special Projects. A talented photographer, Salvani started her career with West Point’s Public Affairs Office and recently completed her 53rd year working at the Academy.

Mike Vaccaro is the lead sports columnist at the New York Post, a position he has held since 2002. Previously a columnist at The Star-Ledger, Kansas City Star and Times Herald-Record, Vaccaro is also the author of several books, mostly recently “Mariano Rivera: Saving Grace,” which was published in 2013.

Steve Waldman is in his second year with the Army Athletic Communications staff. He serves as the primary contact for Army’s sprint football, wrestling, men’s rugby and women’s rugby teams. Prior to arriving at West Point, Waldman worked four years as a student assistant in the Sports Information Office at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, Fla. He was presented with the Bill Esposito Award, given annually to a graduating college senior who wishes to pursue a career in athletic communications, at the 2015 ECAC Sports Information Directors of America workshop. Waldman graduated from Florida Southern with a degree in Sports Communication and Marketing.

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