by Olivia P Tucker
Times Reporter
Curtis White of Austin has been named the Crothersville girls varsity basketball coach for the 2023-2024 basketball season.
White is a teacher at Austin High School where he has taught for the last 23 years.
White said he is very excited to come back to coaching basketball especially since basketball has always been a sport he has been coaching for over the last 30 years.
He has coached various other sports such as volleyball, golf and track throughout the years of his coaching career. He was also the athletic aid for the Austin Girl’s basketball team when they won the state championship in 2010.
He took a break from coaching varsity basketball after being the coach at Christian Academy of Indiana 12 years ago. The reason is that when he had his kids, he wanted to be able to step back from coaching to spend time with them and take care of his family.
His son CJ graduated high school this year and told White, “Dad, I would like to see you coach again.” Which gave White the okay that his son is grown up and he is able to coach basketball again for a varsity team.
“I am really, really glad that I got the job in Crothersville,” said White, “my mother called me after I went up and talked with [Jacob Dunn] and saw everything after I got the job. And she asked what it was like and I said it was like going home.”
White’s father, Curtiss White, worked as a foreman at the old Regal Insulation for over 30 years and because of this, he was familiar with the people and places of Crothersville.
White said, “I’ve already had a chance to meet the girls and I am really, really looking forward to working with them. Just seem like great kids, just in the hour and a half I got to spend with them in practice. Seems like a really great group of kids.”
White’s goal is to build interest for the team to be able to build a junior varsity team, if not for the 2023-2024 season at least within the next year. He also would like to build the elementary and middle school girl’s basketball programs up as well.
He said that he told the girls on the Lady Tigers team, “Girls, there are two banners that hang up [in the gym]. Both are sectional championships, one for the boys in 2020 and one for the girls in 2017. I said your goal is to hang at least one to two more banners and you cannot be satisfied with a sectional. Sectionals are great but you can’t be satisfied with that. You have to be willing to push forward to see if you can be something of your own making.”
“In my life, I’ve loved the sport of basketball, I’ve loved the sport of volleyball. But what I’ve loved more than that is I’ve loved children, I love watching children grow and achieve and this is another chance for me to pour into a group of kids and see what they can achieve. Anything that they achieve has nothing to do with me but being their encourager.” said White.