Basik Instincts: Part One

Keith Basik’s philosophy from his days as Lely’s undersized star running back circa 1981 was simple. "I just didn't mind going up against anyone,” Basik said. That maxim served Basik well as he was parlaying local gridiron success into an appointment at West Point, a front-row seat in the Gulf War, and a ticker tape parade in New York City.  

Basik was the smallest guy on the 1981 All-Southwest Florida football team. He used speed, physicality, and instincts to shake free for 1,150 yards in his senior season alone. Twice he ran for over 200 yards in a game as a senior.  Basik’s career as a Trojan ball carrier started his freshman year, but his favorite touchdown as a Trojan came a year earlier. 

"One of my best touchdownswas when I was in middle school, our eighth-grade year,” he said.“They were allowing you to play in the Black-Orange game during spring training. So, I came up for that spring training game, and I remember going into an old band room at Lely. I'm in there and there's like two or three eighth graders that wanted to play in that game. I go in the room and it was Coach Bill Broxson at the time. He said, 'I want to make sure everyone knows we've got a couple people from East Naples Middle School, and he just points to one of the guys. He said, ‘What are you looking to play?' And one guy says, freshman football and another says, JV football. Then he asked me, and I said I want to play varsity. Everyone goes, ‘Whoa. We’re out to get this guy.' I played in the Black-Orange game, and I was one of the starting backs as an eighth grader. The first play of the game, I go the wrong way and hit the quarterback and he kind of fumbles the ball. And the second play of the game they hand it to me, and I run 60 yards for a touchdown. It was probably the coolest run I ever did. They did an announcement in the East Naples Middle School. Yeah, that was pretty cool." 

Basik was a quick back who didn’t mind taking on bigger defenders. 

"I was pretty quick. I was quick up the middle. I could move real well. I just thought I was pretty tough-minded. I'd go up against anyone. I mean, even at a young age, I just didn't care who I went up against. I'd go head-on with anybody. I would say those are the two things: I was quick, and I didn't mind going up against anyone. 

“If you look at my program,” he jokes, "I was six foot. I would say I was 5’9” at best, 155, somewhere around there. I wasn't a big guy.” 

Basik was the fourth of five Basik brothers from Marco Island to play football for Lely. He was also the top player of the five, who all, incidentally, went on to graduate from U.S. military academies. 

"Football for us was always in our blood,” Basik said. "I mean, we played from a young age. I started doing real well in football, probably about middle school. Everything was football. I mean, I did track, but it was for football. I wasn't exceptionally small, but when I went into college, I was one of the smaller guys on the team.” 

Army started noticing Basik in high school and set their sights on Lely’s star back. Basik’s older brother Jeff was a player at Air Force a few years earlier. 

"Army really wanted me to play for them,” Basik said. “They were really interested and had me come out there. When I went to West Point, it looked different than the Air Force Academy. If you've ever been to West Point, it has more of a historic kind of feel. It's been around for a lot longer. They were really excited for me to play there. They really recruited me pretty hard. When I went up there, I just thought, you know, this looks a lot different. This is pretty cool. What I remember the most is the kind of historic vibe you got at night. You've got snow on the ground, you've got these majestic buildings in the background. They've got this low lighting and stuff. It just had a different vibe altogether than other places. The first time I went up there they had me spend a couple nights in the old Thayer Hotel, which is where General McArthur stayed when he was going through school. It's an old historic hotel.” 

West Point has trained most of the great American military commanders since the first half of the 19th century. Some of the famous graduates include Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman, George Patton, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and Norman Schwarzkopf. Astronauts Frank Borman, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who lived on Marco Island for many years, were also West Point grads. Basik was in awe of those who came before him. 

There's a motto at West Point that says, “Much of the history we teach was made by people we taught,” he said. “You walk around, you see Grant, you see Eisenhower, you see all these pretty significant figures in history that have gone there.” 

During his first year at West Point Basik was listening to a general who delivered an alarming message. 

“You never think you're going to war,” Basik said. “I mean, it was actually the first weekend I came in as a freshman or a plebe. I remember hearing a general, this was during the Cold War, probably about 1983. Not much going on at the time, and the general's up there and he goes, ‘You know, you guys need to prepare to go to war because you are going to war. How did that feel? Yeah, I mean, it was like,’Oh, what's this guy know?’ It’s 1983. Vietnam was a long time away. The Cold War was stagnant. It wasn't really doing that much. And you're going, ‘Well, you know, I've got five years. Most likely, you're not going to have that.' And then you look back and you go, ‘You know, that guy was right on.' That was in 1990. I'd been out for about three years. That's when they notifiedus. Then we had to get prepared to go over there. They sent me out as one of about ten people in our whole division that went out to Saudi Arabia as part of the advance party to get ready for the division to get out there. So, we went out there, kind of figured out what was on the ground, what people were going to prepare for, what materials. I was a procurement officer. They made that up on the spot. They said, ‘We're going to have you carry the money.’ I had another guy with me that carried a weapon. We would go into the Triplet Cities of Saudi Arabia: Dammam, Dhahran, and Khobar.  

"We'd go in there, purchase computers, urinals, toilet paper, I mean anything you could think of. We just needed to figure out where to get the supplies. We would go around and talk to all the local merchants. They would interact with us. We had the money and they liked us. I'dbe invited to different houses. And it was a different era at that point because they were really welcoming us. They were like, ‘You're saving us.' They're seeing Saddam Hussein going to Kuwait. Next stop, Saudi Arabia. Just go down south. We didn't deal with all the terrorism elements of Saudi Arabia during the 2000s era, you would not go into anyone's houses and stuff then. It was just a different mindset. They were just so happy to see us there. And so I went over to a couple of homes and got a chance to really speak candidly with people. Because they were happy to see us. They were kind of intrigued about us, our culture, and I was intrigued about them.”