For many years, Gary Curtis was there to cheer on runners as they crossed the finish line in track and field and cross country, giving the athletes their personal best times and inspiring them to do even better next time.

And after 50 total years of coaching/teaching, Curtis will once again retire, this time for good, hanging up the coach’s clipboard and stepping away from the cross country program that he helped build from the ground-up in 1996.

“[I’ll miss] the kids [the most]. I read the paper, don’t know them. [I] look at the kids who graduated and recognize a few family names, but I don’t know anyone but the track girls,” Curtis said. “For the next three years, I’ll know my track girls and I won’t know any past that, and since kids have been my life, that’ll be kind of tough.”

Walking away was a tough decision, but Curtis felt that “it was time” now that he is a 77-year-old grandpa with a daughter living in Minnesota and another in Norway.

“It’s been fun. I would probably stay in there doing it the rest of my life,” Curtis said. “Just knowing that Mark [Hostetler] is in charge, he’s fully capable of doing it. It just felt like the right time to [retire].”

The beginning

Curtis came to the area in 1978, starting at Mid-Prairie’s junior high as a teacher, wrestling coach, and track coach.

There was no track for the junior high. Where the softball fields now reside was a large field that Curtis would doctor up for each meet with chalk, drawing all the intricacies of a track layout.

He needed patience to deal with the middle schoolers, nudging them into trying new things and slightly pushing them to get better without draining the fun out of the experience.

Curtis’ dedication to the track layout was his same methodology for coaching wrestling, which he did for ten years. Every day, he and the team needed to set the room up for practice. After an hour-long practice, they needed to return it to its previous arrangement. Curtis did it each day without complaint.

Curtis keeps a scrapbook of memories from his many years of coaching. He recounted many stories that brought joy, from a student who would cross the finish line with a “ta-da!” to middle schoolers who rolled around in the chalk before their race, losing track of time. Curtis can remember minor details and stories from many of the athletes he’s helped along the way.

Each of his daughters and his wife were impacted positively by his coaching.

“As a child, I loved helping at track meets and watching the ‘big girls’ run at practice. I was especially interested in the hurdles. I still remember dad setting up my own little hurdles in the back yard,” daughter Tiffany Strande recalled. “In 1993 I finally got to join his junior high track team. I suddenly had an appreciation for the time he put into each meet line-up.”

His daughter Lacey Iverson said “Now, as an adult and teacher myself, I am incredibly impressed by how well he managed to lead so many beginners through such a spectrum of skills and still make it fun.”

The start of cross country

In 1996, Curtis’ daughter and a friend asked if he would start a cross country team. Curtis was very familiar with the sport since it was his favorite from college. He was up for the task, starting as a volunteer without pay. There was one hurdle: bringing in kids who were unfamiliar with the newly developed sport.

Just as he expected, the first year saw minimal turnout. Curtis only signed his team up for junior varsity meets to compensate for their lack of experience. But as they started to show growth and success, more kids wanted to join in on the fun.

Curtis was told it might take 10 years to see results for a new cross country team, and that is exactly how long it took. 2006 berthed the first state qualifiers. Starting with a small crowd of fans, Curtis helped give cross country a well-known name at Mid-Prairie; the addition has boded well for the school, seeing it take off in long distance running ever since.

Curtis found ways to interweave cross county into the heart of school athletics, like combining homecoming football festivities with a “homecoming run” from Kalona to the high school where the football team plays. The cross country students would finish the race with the music from “Rocky” playing as they entered the arena, handing the starting ball off to referees.

Eventually, the run morphed into a charity run alongside its main mission of transporting the football to bring awareness to cross country.

Curtis managed to keep everything fun. He would bring frozen pops to meets for the athletes to enjoy after it concluded, and if he felt the team was down, he would announce a “Slagle Run” where the kids would run to the Slagle’s Pharmacy in Wellman for an ice cream break. Curtis was establishing a winning culture.

Curtis organized an end-of-season party each year at the city park with water balloons and hot dogs which was “always a big hit,” according to wife Becky Curtis. He also concluded each year with a personalized award show with inside jokes for the students, the coach showing each individual runner their value and worth.

Curtis continued doing these things until his initial retirement in 2006.

Despite bringing great success to the schools, Curtis is a very humble and soft-spoken man. Everything he did was for the betterment of the student athletes.

“Probably any coach would say [winning state] is the ultimate [goal]. I remember when the boys cross country team won their state cross country meet, I wasn’t even part of the team, but I felt like, wow, this is fantastic,” Curtis said. “But when our girls won and being part of it, finally, these guys have worked so hard for this, they have accomplished this, it wasn’t about me. I felt so happy for them.”

Back for track 

After retiring from teaching in 2006, Curtis took a step back, but his passion for coaching wouldn’t keep him sidelined for long. He came back in 2009, helping the high school girl’s track and field team in whatever capacity was needed. Most recently, his ability to help in any event directed him towards the high jump and Mid-Prairie graduate Ella Groenewold, who took first place at many local meets this track season before placing tenth at state.

Curtis’s least favorite track events were the ones that took him off the field.

“I’m always at the finish line so whether they finish first or last, I can give them their time and congratulate them, let them know that someone noticed,” Curtis said. “I hate it when we have meets where they don’t allow coaches on the field.”

Curtis’s contribution to the track team is undeniable, watching them win five straight state titles and ranking second place this year at state. Curtis believes that the 2020 track and field team was the strongest, but COVID-19 disrupted their chances of shining at state.

Curtis holds the recent state titles as some of his favorite memories, making it such a hard decision to walk away from coaching.

“2017 we were runners-up, 10 points short of being champions. And then, of course, in 18 and 19 we’re champions. And then COVID in 20, [we likely] would have been champions, that was probably our strongest team,” Curtis said. “21, 22, champions and this year runners-up, can’t beat that.”

This year’s state champion for track and field was Van Meter. Their coaching staff remarkably thanked Curtis and the Mid-Prairie staff before receiving their trophies, citing that Mid-Prairie set the standard and they knew they would need to work extremely hard year-round to overcome Mid-Prairie, starting workouts immediately after taking second place a year ago.

It was the ultimate compliment, proof of the hard work that Curtis instilled for the last 45 years at Mid-Prairie.

Whatever chapter is next for Curtis, it will be pursued with passion and dedication, while he keeps an eye on the successes of Mid-Prairie’s track and cross country programs.