Part II: From ‘Chi-Town’ to the Rockies — “The best day of my life.”
Posted on December 3, 2007
As quickly as times began to shift from childhood to pre-adolescence, so did the scenery. Only in fourth grade, Pierre had to pack up his things for Denver, CO and leave his friends and family behind in Chicago.
The move was not only to a rockier landscape, but to rockier realities.
Pierre’s mother was ill with kidney failure and was bussed to the hospital three times a week for four-hour dialysis treatments.
“They basically take all the blood out of your system and clean it and then they put it back in,” Pierre said. “She [came] home out of it and tired. When I was nine, they told her she was gonna live five years on dialysis without a transplant.”
Carolyn refused to let her condition hinder her ability to raise Pierre and gave him the best she could offer. The two quickly grew closer than just a mother and a son; they became best friends.
They did everything together from gaming to eating to arts and crafts and simply just talking.
“When I got to live with my mom it was the best day of my life,” Pierre said as he cracked his first smile of the interview. “We did everything together. My mom liked to play games, so we went to arcades together and she always challenged me to air hockey or playing basketball on the little hoops.
“She always wanted to be a major part of my life. Since the beginning she was there for me, just not as much as she wanted to be.”
Despite now being a Division I basketball player, the sport didn’t play a major role in his pre-high school days. Carolyn stressed dabbling in books over the dribbling the ball and Pierre had to learn this the hard way.
“I played four games in fifth grade and my mom took me off the team because she said I wasn’t doing good enough in school,” Pierre said. “Granted I had all Bs, but she just wanted all As, and I didn’t play [organized] again ’til eighth grade.”
His sister, Ryan Rice, noticed a change in Pierre as he settled into life with his mother in Denver.
“School-wise he soared to the top,” Ryan said. “He went from being the ‘bad boy’ getting in trouble to the getting all the accolades.”
Basketball or the streets
After a three-year hiatus, Pierre got back on the court in eighth grade. But he didn’t begin taking basketball seriously until he began high school at Denver East.
“I wasn’t good at all,” Pierre said of his basketball renaissance. “I honestly just played to keep me out of trouble.”
By his sophomore year, the Denver East coaches began noticing Pierre’s potential and assistant coach Warren Harding liked what he saw.
“Since his freshman year he was one of the leaders in the program on and off the court,” Harding said over the phone from Denver. “He wasn’t that big, but he got in the weight room and really dedicated himself.
“From day one he really had that floor generalship and I knew he was gonna be one of the best players to come out of East.”
Harding and head coach Rudy Carey pushed Pierre to excel in the classroom as much as on court, letting him know that he could one day play Division I college basketball.
Like in any city, gang activity provided a kinship for some of the students at East High. Harding, a probation officer by day, gave Curtis an ultimatum: focus on basketball or end up a product of the streets and behind bars.
“When Pierre was in school at East, we had gang problems,” Harding said. “There were gangs trying to get him to go steal things from people. He would shy away and they’d call him soft.
“A lot of the people trying to pull Pierre down are in jail or not doing anything with themselves. He told me about it, and three days later he came back and said that he was gonna dedicate himself to basketball and not hang around them.”
The decision was a wise one for Curtis, as he continued to excel on the basketball court and in the classroom. But he admitted that his mother’s illness was far more of a distraction than the pressures of being a teen.
“Denver wasn’t really bad, I was just doing stupid things with the wrong people,” Curtis said. “When I was young, my mom being sick was a real distraction. I was always worried about her so if I had a game and my mom wasn’t there I wouldn’t really want to play.”
Carolyn kept busy despite the persistent pain and tri-weekly trips to the hospital. She helped run an after-school program and volunteered at churches. While at home she kept busy with arts and crafts.
One thing she always had time for was watching Pierre play basketball.
“She did anything she could to help me,” Pierre said. “She paid for me to play on travel teams and was always there. She would get mad because sometimes I’d forget to tell her I had a game.
Pierre struggled to remember her missing any games that didn’t interfere with her dialysis. She would even try to schedule appointments as early as dawn so as to not miss her son play.
“They had a different type of friendship,” Ryan said. “Nobody could top mom. In any home video you could always here my mama’s voice. She became the team mom of anything [Pierre] was involved in. He was never ashamed to say, ‘She’s my mom,’ as crazy and as loud as she was.”
JMU sophomore center Dazzmond Thornton who played with Pierre at East High — a bond that helped the Dukes corral the transfer from Texas Tech — echoed the sentiments of Carolyn’s connectedness to Pierre and his endeavors.
“She was like my second mom,” Thornton said. “She was so proud of him when he decided to come here and then when I made my decision and we had the opportunity to play together again she was just ecstatic to see that.
“She wanted the best for all of us. She was like the unannounced team mom, we knew if we didn’t play good we were gonna have to hear it from Pierre’s mom.”
With the support of his mother and the persistent drilling of his coaches Pierre excelled at East.
He was a two-year starter and ran point guard for the 24-0 team that won the 5A State Championship. In his senior campaign he averaged 21 points and six assists helping to garner a McDonald’s All-America nomination.
Despite being runner-up for the state’s Mr. Basketball award, Pierre didn’t create much of a buzz around the Division I programs. He decided to spend a year at Charis Prep in Goldsboro, N.C. He upped his scoring average to 22 points and led Charis to a 26-11 record and No. 14 national ranking among prep schools.
The extra year helped and schools started talking. Curtis settled on James Madison hoping to make an immediate impact.
The third and final installment of the series will run Thursday, Dec. 6.
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