Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994 TAG: 9403100163
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Could have been, but wasn't. Worse things followed.
Curtis, the senior star of the girls' track team at Radford, has overcome more hurdles off the track than on to get to where she is today. She began her career as a skinny ninth-grader faced with the pressure of lofty, almost unattainable, expectations she couldn't have scaled even with her best high jump.
She ends her career this spring, a year removed from arthroscopic knee surgery that tripped her up as a junior and further compounded her hopes of living up to those expectations.
"She's had a lot of added pressure on her that she just didn't need," said Tony DeHart, Radford's girls' coach. "As the years have gone by, and as she has matured, I don't think she feels the pressure as much. She's grown up to be her own person."
That hasn't been easy to do, because ever since she was a freshman, people have told her she could be like someone else. Specifically, Jadean Curtis was supposed to be the next Millicent Shabazz.
Shabazz was perhaps the greatest all-around female athlete to come out of Radford, a school noted for its reputation of producing great all-around female athletes. In the spring of 1989, Shabazz rewrote the track and field record books not only at Radford, but at the state level.
The Radford girls rolled to the Group AA state championship that year, as Shabazz ran off and bounded away with individual titles in the triple jump, long jump and 300-meter intermediate hurdles. She still holds the state record in the triple jump. Her school records in the 300 hurdles, triple jump and long jump may stand for years.
Because Curtis competes in many of the same events in which Shabazz starred, and because she had some success as a ninth-grader in those events, the comparisons were inevitable. People wanted her to be like Millicent Shabazz. Some people wanted her to be Millicent Shabazz.
"When I was in the 11th grade, some parents came up to me at one meet and said 'Hi, Millicent, how are you doing?'" Curtis said. "I said 'I'm not Millicent.' They said, 'Are you sure?'
"It was always like that. Even in class, people were saying, `You could be the next Millicent.' I didn't even know who she was until I looked up some of her records. I was amazed."
The pressure began to build with each old newspaper article she read and with each mythical tale she heard about Shabazz, like the one where she completely cleared the pit on a long jump and had to take off from the boys' marker on ensuing jumps.
She was really feeling the pressure the day of the New River District meet her freshman year. Even after she had won the triple jump, she was still nervous. So nervous, in fact, that she practically ran over a hurdle, fell forehead first into the old asphalt track at Radford and knocked herself out.
"I was so scared that day," she said. "I felt like I let everybody down."
As a sophomore, she qualified for the state meet in five events - the triple jump, high jump, 100 and 300 hurdles, and the 400 relay. The next year, she was having her best season when she tore cartilage in her right knee while competing in the triple jump during the All-American Relays. Her season was over the following week when her knee was 'scoped.
She made her comeback this winter by placing sixth in the high jump during the state indoor track and field meet. As a young, talented Radford team enters the spring season with hopes of challenging Christiansburg and Blacksburg in the NRD, Curtis appears primed to have her best year.
"This is the year I really want to prove myself," she said.
It's a wonder Curtis is the tremendous athlete she is considering that she spent much of her childhood in fear of going outside. Until she was 10 years old, Curtis lived with her mother, Janet Torres, in a rough neighborhood in Newark, N.J. Things were so bad there - crime, drugs, violence - that one day Janet packed up the kids and took them to Christiansburg to spend a vacation with a family friend.
They never returned to Newark. Never even went back to get their belongings.
"We didn't go back to get nothing," Curtis said.
It was as an elementary school student in Radford that Curtis became involved in athletics, although athletic ability runs in her family. University of Louisville basketball star Clifford Rozier is a cousin, and she swears that her father, Roger Rozier, recently told her that she is a not-too-distant cousin of NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal.
Then again, Curtis has had enough of measuring her athletic accomplishments against those of someone else. She's no longer the next Millicent Shabazz, and she's glad.
"I'm not known as the next Millicent," Curtis said. "It's Jadean. My name's Jadean."
by CNB