The Queens native was first called…
By Dylan Butler
A nickname is as common to New York City playground basketball as chain linked fences and asphalt courts. While many nicknames tout a player’s basketball prowess, David Hilton’s is appropriate both on and off the court.
The Queens native was first called “Jeep” for the way he powerfully drives through the lane. But the nickname can also accurately describe Hilton’s insatiable appetite to succeed against all odds.
Hilton’s remarkable journey began literally on the streets of New York as a homeless 15-year-old kid to where he is now, the starting point guard for the University of Hawaii as a freshman.
“When I was playing down at West 4th Street, a bum said I was like a little jeep, I just keep going,” Hilton said. “I like to think that about myself, that I just keep going.”
It has been a long, arduous road for Hilton. He attended four city high schools — All Hallows, LaSalle, St. Peter’s and John Bowne. Plagued by academic eligibility problems, he played just seven games at the Flushing high school.
Hilton and his mother, who was 15 when he was born, had an on-again, off-again relationship and finally, in the summer of 1996, she kicked him out of their Flushing home for good, he said.
Hilton, who never knew his father, spent the next month sleeping on park benches and in the subway when it rained. While he didn’t have a roof over his head at night, Hilton said being homeless had its advantages.
“When I was on the street I was having fun,” said Hilton, who is closer with his mother now and says she is working and doing well. “Sure, I didn’t have anywhere to go, but my friends were there and I was having fun.”
During that summer, Hilton met Lilabet Foster, an Academy Award-nominated producer who was filming “Soul in the Hole,” a film documenting playground basketball.
Foster and Hilton almost immediately bonded. Within a few weeks of their first meeting, Foster, along with former Bowne guidance counselor Kathy Manudis, was helping Hilton navigate through the red tape of New York City agencies in order to get Hilton into the child welfare system.
“It became a full-time job for me,” Foster said. “Everyday for more than a month, we pressured the [Office of Children Services].”
During their struggle, Hilton was placed at the Yorkville Common Pantry, a Harlem men’s shelter. Those were some of the bleakest days for Hilton, who was afraid to sleep at the shelter.
“It was tough because of the fact I was in a shelter and I had all this family in New York,” he said. “It was nasty, terribly nasty. I couldn’t wait to leave there in the morning.”
As per the shelter’s rules, Hilton was forced out at 6 a.m. and could not return until 6 p.m. He spent most of his spare time playing ball in the park and meeting with Foster.
“On Saturdays we would meet at a diner in the morning and we basically hung out all day,” she said. “I got involved in his schoolwork.”
After finally getting Hilton into the child welfare system, Foster and Manudis got Hilton into Kaplan House, a group home in Manhattan which was right around the corner from a Boys Club, where Hilton played for the Academic All-Stars — a team that traveled to play several New England prep schools. It was at Kaplan House where Hilton met Vic Butler, an advisor at the group home and head coach of the Erasmus Hall High School basketball team.
“He had this inner drive,” Butler recalled. “A lot of kids in the group home, they have a chip on their shoulder and they feel bad for themselves. I knew he’d make it because he is not a quitter.”
Hilton also became very close to Butler, so close he calls him, “the father I never had.”
“I feel as if God put me there for a reason,” Hilton said. “It was a blessing that I stayed there because without [Butler] I don’t know what would happen to me.”
Through Kaplan House and the Academic All-Stars, Hilton was able to get a scholarship to the Hyde School, a prep school in Woodstock, Conn.
More than two hours from New York City in the northeast corner of Connecticut, Hilton experienced quite a culture shock at the tough prep school, which primarily housed “spoiled, wealthy white kids,” according to Hyde basketball coach Tom Stoup.
“Socially, I was lost,” he said. “I had a terrible stutter and on the streets all you hear is curse words. It was tough to adapt socially. [In the beginning] I always had conflict because of where I was from and where they were from.”
After acclimating, Hilton hit the books hard, corrected the stutter and became a model student over the next three years.
“He’s an amazing kid. When he was here he was a natural leader,” Stoup said. “He became quite a public speaker at the school with his incredibly sincere and honest comments about his life.”
While Hilton was turning his life around academically and socially, he had yet to make an impact on the basketball court. That came at the prestigious Five-Star Camp in 1999.
Four point guards at the camp were invited to the all-star game, Omar Cook of St. John’s, UConn’s Taliek Brown and Andre Barrett from Seton Hall — the trio known as the “Holy Trinity” of point guards — and the unknown Hilton.
“I shut them down in camp, all three scored a combined 17 points against me,” Hilton said. “Everyone was asking me, ‘What college you going to?’ I had no idea. When I was taking the bus back to New York, I just thought, ‘I don’t know what just happened.’”
What happened was instant exposure. Stoup’s phone at Hyde began ringing off the hook. Dozens upon dozens of Division I coaches began vying for Hilton’s services.
Among them was Riley Wallace, head coach at Hawaii, who invited Hilton to Honolulu for an official visit. While schools like Fordham, Western Kentucky, Duquesne and Northeastern expressed interest in Hilton, when his plane touched down at Honolulu International Airport, Hilton’s mind was made up.
“When I saw the palm trees, the water and the sky, I wanted to cry,” he said. “I was driving to my hotel and everything was so beautiful.
“I’ve been in the ghetto, I’ve been in the worst places possible and I felt I had the opportunity to go to school in paradise.”
Hilton signed with Hawaii in April, 2000 and after a summer of speaking to community groups in Ohio and the Northeast about his story, he began his first semester at Hawaii and Hilton’s struggles continued.
“It’s really tough to play my game within the system,” Hilton said about the Rainbow Warriors’ difficult half-court set. “It’s so tough for me. But I have to keep plugging away. I just have to get better.”
Hilton was not suppose to get the nod as starting point guard, as Wallace thought junior college transfer Ricky Terrell would run the offense. But when Terrell struggled, the 5-foot-11, 145-pound freshman got the call.
“He would have been perfect for a red-shirt so he could get used to college life, but instead I had to throw him right into the coals,” Wallace said. “He’s struggling with the offense, but he gets better every game. When he’s good, we’re good.”
Hilton has started 16 of Hawaii’s 19 games and averages 2.6 points, 2.6 assists in 23.5 minutes per game.
“At times I felt like giving up, but I just can’t give up,” he said. “Everybody feels like giving up sometime. Through my experience I’ve learned not to give up because whenever I don’t give up, something usually good comes out of it.”
Reach Associate Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 143.
