Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team, and Their Triumph in the Time of KatrinaAuthor: Thompson, NealGenre: Sports Publisher: Free Press Released: July 1, 2007 |
A Review by Kim Lumpkin
09/17/2007
The driving force of the Patriots is coach John Curtis, son of the school’s founder. He’s the kind of coach who isn’t afraid to tell his team that he loves them, and to stress that good character is more important than winning. He takes a strong personal interest in all of his players, even inviting some of them into his home if their living situations are too unstable and precarious. Yet all this doesn’t make him immune to accusations that his school is simply a factory for “muscle heads” with no real academic skills. One incident Thompson describes is a good example of how “J.C.” handles these misconceptions without losing his cool:
He once attended a meeting of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, or LHSAA, and listened to another high school coach disparage his school: The kids at John Curtis are on steroids, they never go to class, they live in the weight room. J.T. stood up and calmly introduced himself to the coach, then said, ‘Listen, I don’t know who you are, and I’ve never even seen you in my school. You’ve never walked down my halls or sat in on my classes or even seen my weight room. You don’t know anything about me or my school. Do you?’ The guy sheepishly admitted that J.T. was right.
Thompson makes you care about these kids and their coaches and teachers, so that when the storm shatters their routine and threatens their futures, it is easy to both identify with their anxiety and admire their determination to persevere. The punishment the boys willingly put themselves through in training is in stark contrast to how many government officials reacted to the disaster, including FEMA director Michael Brown, who, when making television appearances after Katrina, needed to be advised to “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt…on TV, you need to look more hardworking.”
In Katrina’s aftermath, John Curtis’s top students are tempted to go to other schools, with many unscrupulous recruiters telling them their school “is underwater or fell down,” and offering students free tuition with guaranteed spots on the varsity team. Will the best players be among those bailing out? Even if enough students return to keep the school open, will the only returning students be those whose families can afford to rebuild their homes and lives quickly, disrupting the delicate racial and socio-economic balance that makes it so unique? And what will become of the Patriot’s season, which seems to have been ended before it had a chance to begin? Even if you don’t care about football, it’s hard not to care about kids who have suffered so much and now face losing one of the most important stabilizing forces in their lives, and it is yet another reminder how how sports is often much more than "just a game." It’s a real page turner that just happens to be true.
© Copyright CultureCartel.com 09/17/2007
