Hurricane Season Blessings

Coach J. T. Curtis is known nationally for his high school football program. College scouts around the country recruit the young talent he breeds in the muggy New Orleans summers. With 11 undefeated seasons and 22 state championships under his belt, the coaching staff at John Curtis Christian School was preparing for the 2005 season like any other. That’s when hurricane Katrina hit. “You know, it is easy to look back and say, ‘Why didn’t everybody get out?” Coach J.T. Curtis said. “Because we have been called to evacuate for 40 years and nothing happened; it had happened 100 times and nothing happened, so you become used to it being said. And to be honest, what I told the players, I said, ‘Now guys, when we get back from the evacuation - if we can’t get back by Monday, then Tuesday we’re having practice, because we’ve got to get ready for Cottonwood.’ And that’s the way we left, thinking we were going to come back Monday.” That Monday, the New Orleans levies caved under the weight of the water, flooding the city. “You can’t imagine, to be off on a weekend vacation and get a call Sunday night that says don’t come home because you don’t have one. And by the way you have no job either. The blow of that, the difficulty of dealing with that tragedy, and all the lives that were negatively affected when those levies broke and that water flooded into our city, it was overwhelming,” J.T. said. “In fact, I was very afraid. I had opportunities to come back to the city and I chose not to. I was just as most people would be, scared to death to actually see it in person,” his wife, Lydia said. “So, as we came back and the devastation set in, the doubt started to sink in. Can we come back?” J.T. said. When the Curtis family re-entered the city to survey the damage, J.T. was surprised to find the school in need of minimal repair. “I knew that, right then, it was bigger than me. It was bigger than the hurricane; that God had a plan and that experience gave me the faith to say, ‘Hey dummy, walk by faith. Don’t worry about the circumstances, walk by faith,’” J.T. said. “We didn’t know if we would have any students, didn’t know if we would be able to find anybody available to teach, but we knew we could come back.” Less than a month after hurricane Katrina, John Curtis Christian School reopened with only 500 students, but nothing stopped J.T. from calling his first football practice. “I didn’t know if we would have one or we would have 20, but about 40 guys showed up,” J.T. said. “We had basically a new team,” one of the players said. “We had so many people not come back, and a funny thing - when we first came back we were all just sitting there, and every time someone would walk in we would all cheer, ‘Yeah, you’re back, you’re back!’ And then a new guy would come in and we would be like, ‘alright what’s your name?’ And we would get to know each other.” “We were just scrambling to find games any place, and so we finally found a game on the fifth playing date, halfway through the season,” J.T. said. “And when we played that game, it was our first game. We lost 16-6. It’s the first time I played and lost where it didn’t make any difference. People were so happy to be back together.” “Football was the only normal thing they had in their life and in the lives of their families. Friday night became the only place they could gather together and be like it was a month ago. Nothing else was the same, no Popeye’s fried chicken, no Burger King, no McDonalds, no Pizza Hut, no malls to go to, no movie to go to - I mean nothing in their lives was the same, just school and those games. So it became such an important part of their lives, not only for those kids but for their family,” J.T. said. “Interestingly, we got our last kid back the tenth playing date of the year. And we really felt good about our team going to the final semi-final game of the season of the state finals that year,” J.T. said. Just minutes before the championship game, assistant coaches brought new uniforms to the locker room. To J.T.’s surprise, they were the exact uniforms his deceased father, and founder of the school, wanted the Patriots to wear. “When I walked in and saw those pants, I knew the other team was in some trouble. I remember the only thing I could say to them was, ‘you put them on and you play with pride because I’m telling you there is a guy smiling down from heaven ear to ear.’ And we went out and played really well and won that game and won the state championship!” J.T. said. “That was one of the best games I think we ever played,” a Patriots player said. “I didn’t want to leave the field after the game,” another player said. “I just wanted to stay there and just sit there and just wait, because you know the season’s over and everybody has to go back to working on houses and stuff.” “The 2005 team will always be a team that I will always remember for their individual stresses in their lives,” J.T. said, “for overcoming the obstacles they overcame. You know, kids would leave practice and go home and tear out sheetrock. Kids would go home and take their sleeping bags and sleep on slab floors because 500 square ft. trailers weren’t big enough. They put their personal problems behind them and focus on that team and it will always be a special team for that.” Appropriately named, the book Hurricane Season captures what this team overcame while bringing God the glory on the gridiron. “I hope that people who hear this or read that book understand that God wants to be in a personal relationship with them. He wants them to trust Him as a Son trusts his Father,” J.T. said. “I learned that this year in a more vivid way then ever in my life. So for me, Katrina was a blessing. The travesty of Katrina, the difficulty of it, all the hard times has turned out to be one of the richest blessings in my life. So I think what it has taught me personally is that God really knows what He’s doing.”