Curtis Now Dodges Tacklers as Well as Trouble : Kearny High’s Standout Running Back Puts the Mean Streets in His Rear-View Mirror

His voice was soft, sometimes barely audible. His eyes were innocent.

There was something saintly about James Curtis as he sat hunched over on a couch in the Kearny High coaches’ office--showing a humility one wouldn’t expect from the star of a notoriously tough football team.

His words, however, were much different. They were truthful words about a violent, law-breaking past in which Curtis, 17, was headed nowhere fast.

It would either be a life of crime or a life that would end prematurely. That’s all in the past now.

Younger players who are spellbound by Curtis, who watch his every move, filed in and out of the office. Curtis kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, speaking above a whisper and humbled himself.

He told a story not of pain but of triumph, as if it was a daily affirmation.

“I used to hang around the wrong group and I got away with a lot of stuff,” he said. “Fightin’. We used to (sigh) jump people, and go stealing in stores. I never really got caught.

“It was almost like a gang thing. But where I come from, they didn’t have gangs. It wasn’t like Bloods or Cuz and all that. But you could consider it a gang.”

Before he moved to San Diego four years ago, Curtis lived in Detroit, Norfolk, Va., and Baltimore. At each stop, Curtis either found the wrong people with whom to associate or they found him.

Coming to Kearny in ninth grade, Curtis had decided he wanted to change. He was tired of carrying a knife for fear of attack.

“A couple times I knew people were going to be after me,” he said. “The scariest thing is I got shot at a couple times.”

At 13, it was important for Curtis to be accepted by his older, tougher friends. So he’d stay out all night, he’d skip school and he’d get away with it at home. He had one friend who had been shot, but Curtis had always managed to avoid such encounters.

Then came one evening about 8 p.m., when his lifestyle came frighteningly close to claiming his life. He heard the shots. He heard bullets whizzing by. His only thought was to find a way to a escape--and to escape from the streets permanently.

“I was running in the middle of the street with no cover,” he said. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My friends were hiding behind cars. And I was just out there.

“That’s what really turned me around. I thought, ‘I can’t be doing this.’ ”

Today, Curtis does a different kind of running. With a football.

A three-year starter at tailback for Kearny, Curtis has rushed for 1,987 yards this season and moved into second place in San Diego Section record book for all-time career yards with 4,812.

He needs 364 yards to catch all-time leader Markeith Ross of Rancho Buena Vista (5,158 yards from 1988-91). Kearny (10-1) probably would have to beat three-time defending section 2-A champion El Camino (10-1) Saturday in the second round of the playoffs for Curtis to have a chance.

But Curtis’ success story is complete regardless. His football will give him a free ride to the college of his choice.

“This has been like a dream,” Curtis said. “I’ve been blessed with great fullbacks, great linemen. I’m glad I didn’t go nowhere else. Kearny’s my life.”

When he moved to San Diego in 1989, Curtis said he was distraught by what he discovered: more gangs, more hoods, more violence. He thought initially of going back to Baltimore. He also considered playing basketball at Lincoln, but the two friends who introduced him to the program weren’t the right kind of guys.

Finally, he sought refuge by playing football at Kearny. Komets Coach Willie Matson knew what he had the first day he saw Curtis. Matson inserted Curtis as a varsity defensive back his freshman year and moved him to starting tailback the next season.

“We’ve had speed at tailback, power, skill and bigger kids,” said Matson. “He’s not like anyone else we’ve had. He has size (6-feet, 200 pounds), speed, blocking ability, hands. . . . He carried our offense at least halfway through the season.”

The gifts Curtis brings to the field also wowed Nate Wright, a former NFL cornerback who played for the Minnesota Vikings from 1971-80 and knows a good running back when he sees one.

“He’s a lot like (ex-Cleveland Brown) Leroy Kelly,” said Wright. “He can be deceptive. He can stop and make guys pass him, then cut back.

“He’ll glide sometimes. He’ll burst sometimes. He can change his style depending on the situation. He’s got it all: size, breakaway speed, the ability to break tackles, the ability to cut back against the grain.

“He’s like a man playing with boys.”

Perhaps he is.

Wright’s son, Rashad Wright, said day-to-day life on the Kearny campus can steal a teen-ager’s innocence.

“Kearny is an inner-city school; there’s a lot of gang influence there,” said Rashad Wright, three-year starter at linebacker and defensive end. “Sometimes those guys look up to the athletes, in terms that you know you want in life.

“But there’s guys on our team that have gang ties.”

And there are those--like Curtis in his youth--who sit on an imaginary fence, waiting to be influenced.

“James and Rashad could very easily have fallen by the wayside,” said Matson. “But they have really good hearts.

“You’re not going to be able to keep kids here unless they really want to be here. If we see a flicker of hope in a kid, we really work with them. We care about them. It’s a struggle at this school and we get frustrated.”

The football team has been a target of thugs. Two years ago, during a postgame gathering at a restaurant, the Linda Vista Crips waged a small riot on the Kearny team. Curtis resisted the temptation to get involved. So did the star of that 1990 squad: Darnay Scott.

Scott was a more notorious fighter than Curtis when he moved to San Diego for much the same reason as Curtis. He had emerged from the mean streets of St. Louis. Scott is now Curtis’ primary role model. Scott, a sophomore wide receiver at San Diego State, was named first-team All-Western Athletic Conference this week and is projected to be a All-American and a first-round NFL draft choice someday.

“Darnay taught me a lot, like how to carry myself,” Curtis said. “He’s a fighter. I can understand where he’s coming from.”

Sometimes Curtis finds it difficult to explain from where he came. But then he flashes back.

“My friends had pot, cocaine, crack,” he said. “They sold it. They used it. We’d jump somebody just for fun.

“I would be out all night. Sometimes I wouldn’t come home. I would be grounded for a month. But I’d be off the hook in a couple days. Then I’d be out again.

“I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. I just wanted to be with the older guys, the tough guys. It was peer pressure. I just did it.

“We moved around a lot. I didn’t want to get real close to no one. I could have stayed in Maryland if I wanted to. But I think if I stayed there, I would have gotten into a lot more trouble. I didn’t think San Diego was like (Baltimore). But there’s guys just like that everywhere.

“Everywhere you go, I guess, you’re going to have guys dealing drugs and stuff--getting in trouble.”

His father, Ron Curtis, was a running back at Michigan who dropped out of school for reasons unknown to James. He left James and his mother when James was seven. Ron calls from New York occasionally, but James no longer considers Ron Curtis his father.

“When we moved here, my step-dad (Ron Moore) explained to me that things would be different; just give it a chance,” Curtis said. “I consider him my dad. I love him . He raised me. He’s taught me how to be a man. He taught me right from wrong.”

Now many of his schoolmates want to learn from Curtis. But being a success story carries with it a responsibility Curtis didn’t want coming into his senior season.

“You wouldn’t believe what an influence he is,” Matson said. “The JV kids line up outside the team room before games. James doesn’t know that, when he comes out, they’re standing there just hoping that he gives them five.

“They watch his every move: how he reacts when he’s hit hard, how he reacts when he’s tackled for a loss. Around here, it’s so easy to throw your helmet after something like that. If James can’t handle it, I’ll have 40 kids getting ejected from the game.”

Said Curtis, “They look up to me, and I didn’t like it at first. I didn’t know how to take it. I didn’t want to make a mistake.”

But now Curtis realizes all he has to do is be himself.

“I’m pretty confident with who I am now,” he said. “I’ve grown up a lot. I know what’s up now.

“If it wasn’t for football, my grades would be down. I probably wouldn’t graduate . . . and I know a lot of great athletes who couldn’t get their act together.”