Cenla’s Kristy Curry sticking to small-town values as she relocates from Tuscaloosa to Tampa
Kristy Lynn Sims Curry is one of the three most famous sports personalities from the LaSalle Parish town of Olla (population 1,300), along with Billy Masters and Herman Johnson of LSU and NFL renown.
But while the time in the spotlight is done for Masters and Johnson, Curry is embarking on yet another coaching adventure, hoping to balance big bucks pressures with small-town virtues.
She surprised plenty of people in late March when she left her post as the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Alabama after 13 seasons to lead the program at the University of South Florida, a mid-major in the American Conference.
Curry had just led Alabama’s women to their fifth NCAA Tournament in the last six years, and it was their fifth straight 20-win season. In her tenure at Tuscaloosa, her teams won 20 or more games seven times – a feat only one other coach (Rick Moody) has topped. Moody did it eight times in 16 seasons, including a trip to the Final Four in 1994, before leaving after the 2005 season. Curry had a major rebuilding task when she arrived (just four SEC wins the previous two seasons), and she succeeded in a big way.
But, as the old saying goes, she got an offer she couldn’t refuse.
Even though she had just signed a $3.5 million contract extension last year that would’ve gone through 2030, she was enticed by her total package at USF.
She signed a 5-year, $4 million contract at USF, with compensation that increases by $25,000 each year that will get her annual earnings to $850,000 by the end of her contract. Not too shabby for a Louisiana girl who was among 52 teenagers in the LaSalle High School Graduation class of 1984.
To hear Kristy tell it, the attraction that pulled her to USF wasn’t as much about the salary package as it was about the resources and the revenue-sharing support at her new digs in sports-crazy Tampa. She said there is a commitment there to do what it takes to excel in college sports’ “changing landscape,” and the man who lured her there is her new boss, Rob Higgins.
Higgins is technically the USF athletics director, but he has the fancy title of CEO of athletics at USF. The title, one of the USF trustees said at the announcement of Higgins’ hiring, reflects the business-oriented job description in a college sports world where the bottom line is as much about financial gains and losses as athletic wins and losses. To keep up with revenue payouts to athletes as well as coaches, an athletic department must constantly grow revenue.
The sports facilities at USF are “incredible,” Curry said, and her boss has an impressive résumé.
Higgins’ credentials include being the previous executive director of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission since 2004. In that job he helped bring two Super Bowls to Tampa, along with the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship, the NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four on four occasions, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament three times, not to mention NCAA championships in hockey and volleyball, major NHL events and even a WrestleMania.
Curry has come a long way since being an all-state point guard at LaSalle and then playing the same position at Louisiana-Monroe (then Northeast Louisiana University) four decades ago. She coached briefly in the high school ranks at Weston and Mansfield before transitioning to college assistant coaching jobs at Tulane, Texas A&M, Stephen F. Austin and Louisiana Tech before getting her first head coaching job at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana.
“I was on Leon Barmore’s staff for three years at Louisiana Tech,” said Curry, “and he put me in a place to go to Purdue, and I am forever indebted to him for that.”
Two years into her time at Purdue, in 2000-01, with the help of an assistant coach with whom she has coached ever since – her husband, Kelly — she led the Boilermakers to a 31-7 record and a berth in the NCAA championship game. In a place where the Indiana folks took some time to get used to her Southern accent, she taught the team things like etiquette and proper business introductions and how to talk to a waiter.
She has done so through her coaching career and plans to continue. “I want them to be prepared for life after basketball,” she said.
Coaching is in her DNA. Her father, Blake Sims, was a longtime junior high coach, and her mom, Ann Sims, coached LaSalle High’s girls basketball for 26 years. Her grandfather, Major Sims, was a coach and principal at LHS during his 41-year career, and her brother, Joel, who still teaches at LHS, was a veteran basketball coach there until a few years ago.
Curry won 179 games in seven seasons at Purdue, making the NCAA Tournament seven times. She was the head coach at Texas Tech for seven seasons before taking the job at Alabama.
She and Kelly have two daughters. The oldest, Kelsey, who was 8 months old when Curry coached Purdue to the title game, is in her third year of law school and doing an internship with the Sun Belt Conference dealing with compliance. The younger daughter, Kendall, who was a stellar prep basketball player in Alabama, just graduated from the University of Alabama and is headed to graduate school at the University of Texas to study economics.
Although Tampa is 820 miles from Olla, Kristy, 59, said she plans to visit her hometown when she can, just as she has done throughout her coaching career, because that is where most of her family still call home. Although her dad died three years ago, her mom “is still going strong” at 87.
“Faith and family will forever be a part of who I am,” she said. “When I go there, it’s all about church (First Baptist) and family. That’s a part of who we are.”