At the time, it didn’t seem like a lucky break.
But for Mike McCurdy, an injury when he was a youngster put him on the path to a great career.
At the time, it seemed anything but.
“I didn’t play sports in high school, I stopped playing in grade school because when I was in sixth grade, I hurt my arm really bad skateboarding,” said McCurdy, a Franklin Towne Charter graduate. “When I got hurt, I was out the whole summer. I took a liking to coaching and developing at that time. My stepfather started an AAU program in the Mount Airy section and I was coaching AAU.
“I was just doing things like keeping score, doing the book, keeping stats, doing the clock. Anything they needed. Just being around the game. When I got better, I tried to get back into playing, but I wasn’t able to get back to my full self. It was frustrating. That’s when I turned to coaching.”
McCurdy, who grew up on the border of Mayfair and Wissinoming but now resides in Parkwood, jumped head first into coaching after he graduated from high school. And at the ripe old age of 19, he had high school coaching job.
“My mentor is Paul Rieser from Tacony Charter, we still talk all the time and he’ll always help me to this day,” McCurdy said. “I got my first coaching job at Tacony Academy Charter at 19. I was terrified, but I said yes. I was coaching varsity high school basketball and I was the youngest high school coach at the time.”
At the time it looked like the biggest challenge you could imagine.
But now he’s a veteran who can handle just about anything. And with his new position, he’ll need it.
Manor College announced that McCurdy will serve as the women’s basketball, women’s volleyball and men’s volleyball head coach for the upcoming school year. He’ll continue to assist with the men’s basketball squad.
McCurdy has plenty of experience with both sports, so he should have no problems with X’s and O’x, but he also knows that coaching is about far more than what happens on the court. It’s all of the other things a coach can do that not only impacts an athlete while they’re playing, but far beyond sports.
“Sports training isn’t about teaching how to make a layup, it’s making a connection,” McCurdy said. “I don’t do it for the money, if I did, I would just drive Uber. Coaching four jobs is insane, but I get to meet more people and I get to impact more lives and that’s what coaching is. It will help me as I grow older.”
So far, the response has been exactly what he’s wanted.
“The response and the reward you get from seeing a person grow and what happens after drives me as a coach,” McCurdy said on the Manor website. “You see the look on their face, the work they put in, it’s so rewarding. You can’t fully put words to it. It’s being inspired by a dedication to watching them grow themselves.”
That’s exactly why he got the job.
“Mike is so dedicated to his craft that his hiring was a no-brainer for me,” John Dempster, Manor College athletic director, said. “Coach McCurdy is a great recruiter and will have this team up and running in no time. I’m really looking forward to watching our programs grow.”
McCurdy, who works as a health teacher at MaST Charter II, isn’t promising growth in terms of wins and losses, but he believes all the programs can be competitive when they get started. But he will give the teams everything he has and he expects success to follow.
“The reason I coach isn’t for accolades or anything like that, I just love doing it,” McCurdy said. “I just love helping others. Why do people play sports? I think it’s an extension of the classroom, it teaches people so much beyond skill. Teaching people how to win, lose and just come together. I love that. Nothing can teach that. Nothing can brings 50,000 people together like a sport can.”
McCurdy will be a busy man, but he knows he can’t do it alone. Luckily he has the greatest assistant he could possibly have.
“There’s no way I could do this without the support of my wife,” McCurdy said. “She works a stressful job. She deals with that and then comes home and I’m not home and the dog is not walked yet. She is so great. We have been married for five years. She is the backbone, whenever I struggle, it’s her helping me. She works nightshift, too. When you don’t see each other, it’s tough. We have boundaries with work and make sure we have time for each other. But no way could I do it without her.”
