J.T. Curtis

Sport: Coach

Induction Year: 2010

Induction Year: 2010

Curtis has won a record 23 state titles, including a record-tying five straight from 2004-08.  His Patriots have 14 consecutive state championship game appearances through 2009 and 25 overall appearances in the state finals.  Curtis has taken his team to the state playoffs 36 times in his 40 seasons and has made the postseason every year since 1975.  From 1979-82, Curtis won 43 consecutive games and from 1979 to 2001, Curtis was not shut out in a national record 303 straight games.  curtis won 136 consecutive district games from 1977-2001 before losing to O.P. Walker 20-0.  Curtis was 0-10 in 1969 — his first season — and 3-3-3 in 1974 for the only non-winning seasons in his tenure.  In 2011, Curtis recorded his 500th, becoming only the second high school football coach in history to reach the milestone.
 

 By Lori Lyons

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Learning, winning never stops for Patriots’ J.T. Curtis

It was early one Sunday morning, and then-LSU assistant coach Pete Jenkins was in a meeting with his fellow staff members, going over a list of recruits.

Then-LSU head coach Bill Arnsparger told Jenkins to give a call to John Curtis High School head football coach J.T. Curtis, who had just won a state championship in the wee hours of the night before.

“I said, ‘Coach. I know their game went real late last night,’” Jenkins said. “So let’s give him another 30 minutes or so to sleep.”

A half-hour later, Jenkins finally called his longtime friend to ask about a certain player. But Curtis’ wife Lydia answered.

“Pete,” she said. “He left at 6 o’clock this morning to go to a clinic.”

Jenkins was amazed.

“Here’s a guy who just went undefeated and won a state championship the night before, and he’s up and out early the next day to go to a clinic,” Jenkins said. “But that’s why he does what he does.  He just keeps that thing rolling.”

“That thing” is the John Curtis football program, born in 1962 and ceded in 1969 to the son of the school’s founder and head master. Since then it has grown from a penniless program with six players to a national powerhouse with more state championship trophies than any other school in the state.

And its coach has become, not only synonymous with the school that bears his name and which he now runs, but also with winning.

Curtis, 63 and about to embark on his 42nd season at the helm of the Patriots, has won 23 football state championships in 27 appearances. His overall career record of 480-52-6 makes him the winningest coach in Louisiana high school history and puts him second in the nation behind John McKissick of Summerville, S.C. He also won six state titles during a lengthy stint as the school’s head baseball coach.

Those incredible achievements have carried him to his pending induction in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday, June 26. For more information and to purchase tickets to the Induction Dinner and Ceremonies, visit the www.lasportshall.com website or call 318-238-4250.

Coaching is the only job Curtis has ever wanted to do.

“I knew in junior high that this was what I wanted to do,” he said. “And it was an absolute calling. It was always intriguing to me.”

An offensive and defensive tackle, Curtis was a three-year letterman at East Jefferson High School in Metarie, and became the first All-State player in the history of the school. He later signed with the University of Arkansas, where he played three years before transferred to Louisiana College.

In 1969 he was nine credit hours short of graduating when his father, the late John Curtis, Sr., invited him to return home to take over the football duties at the school.

“I go to my first meeting, on August 15, 1969,” Curtis recalled. “I had 39 notebooks and six players. I went to my dad’s office and said, ‘Daddy. I only had six guys here today.’

He didn’t say a word.  I said, ‘Daddy, what do you think I should do?’

He finally said, ‘Well, if I was you, I’d get on the phone and start calling some people.’  I knew right then that he was doing his and I had mine.”

Curtis eventually was able to find enough players to field a team – one that went 0-10 and scored two touchdowns in its first season.

But the next year his Patriots made the playoffs. In 1973 they reached the quarterfinals, losing to Notre Dame of Crowley, 16-13. And lessons were learned.

“That was the first time I realized that I had probably set the goals for that team and didn’t realize that they probably could have gone beyond what I had set for them,” Curtis recalled. “So I eliminated goals from that point on. You’ll never see signs up for winning this or scoring this many points or this many touchdowns. Because that ‘73 team probably could have won a championship and I did not realize it.”

And in 1975 the Patriots won their first state championship, beating that same Notre Dame of Crowley 13-12.

Of all the 23 championships he has won, Curtis said he probably remembers that one the best.

“That ‘75 team was not a super-talented bunch in the eyes of the public,” he said. “There were no college signees from that team. But what they were, was a tremendously committed group of kids that wanted to win, that paid the price to win, and were able to.”

It also may be his proudest moment.

“It was so unexpected,” he said. “I don’t think anyone expected us to win it.”

It was just the beginning for Curtis and the Patriots, who went on to win two more titles in the 1970s, then seven in the 1980s, six in the 1990s and seven this decade.

The Patriots have made 35 straight playoff appearances and have won 10 or more games in 35 consecutive seasons. They were state champions three years in a row twice (79-81 and 83-85), four years in a row from 1996-1999 and five years in a row from 2004-2008.

Coach Curtis, meanwhile, has been the Louisiana Sports Writers Associations’ Coach of the Year five times and the Louisiana Football Coaches Association’s Coach of the Year nine times. He was inducted into the Louisiana College Hall of Fame in 1994, two years after going into the Louisiana High School Sports Hall of Fame. He now becomes only the third active coach, in any sport, to be inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame – joining Eddie Robinson and Joel Hawkins.

Jenkins, who will present Curtis to the Louisiana Hall, said the secret to Curtis’ success is the fact that he never stops working.

Said Jenkins: “Coach Bear Bryant once said, ‘Getting there is hard. Staying there is harder.’ J.T. and his program have been able to get there and stay there because he is constantly working to get better and be better. He still goes to clinics. He’s still trying to learn something new, something better. You would think he knows everything there is to know, but he’s still learning. And he does it all for the kids.”

Jenkins also said that Curtis is the most patient man he knows – on and off the field.

“To J.T., a 3-yard gain is a big play,” said Jenkins. “Everybody else is looking for that instant gratification, that 50-yard play for a touchdown. J.T. is just as happy getting three yards at a time.”

Curtis said he is just doing what he loves.

“I love the process,” he said. “I love the organization and the motivation of trying to keep people moving in a positive direction. And the teaching aspect of it is intriguing; trying to help people reach a level that they didn’t think was possible.”

And he’s doing it at a place he loves. Now the headmaster of the school his father founded on a whim, Curtis employs a slew of family members, including sons Johnny and Jeff, a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law.

“It is the family business,” Curtis said.