Clyde Jones was sitting at his home Friday evening, and would welcome a few visitors.
There was longtime Saint Joseph’s University assistant basketball coach and current Rider assistant Geoff Arnold, Imhotep Charter’s longtime basketball coach and athletics director Andre Noble and Interboro boys basketball coach Conrad Kirkaldy.
Or, as Jones referred to them, “Rap’s mentor, and mentees. … We’re all sitting here, reminiscing about him.”
Penn Wood athletic director Ralphal “Rap” Curry, who carved a legendary presence on the basketball floor for both his high school alma mater and Saint Joseph’s University, passed away in the early morning hours of Friday. He had been battling an illness since late spring, according to a social media message from his family.
Curry, 51, is considered one of the best players to ever come out of Saint Joe’s. He played in 107 games over four seasons, a starting guard in all but one of them, and would wind up ranking second in school history in assists (580), seventh in steals (195), 25th in scoring (1,372 points) and 45th in rebounds (521).
He also shares the school record for assists in a game (14). This despite suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament as a sophomore.
During his time with the Hawks, they won two Big 5 titles and made an NIT appearance in 1993. Curry was a three-time All-Big 5 selection. He was inducted into the Saint Joseph’s Men’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Big 5 Hall of Fame in 2008.
And yet for all of that, so many friends, admirers and students past and present at Penn Wood will remember Curry for other things, in other ways.
“We have had great guards at Saint Joseph’s, and without being disrespectful to anyone, he was one of the best,” former Hawks coach John Griffin said of Curry through a university statement. “He was an NBA talent, if not for the injuries. Rap was a remarkable player, but an even better leader and person. And that became more evident after his time at Saint Joseph’s with his work in higher education. He was a terrific husband, father and son.”
“There’s basketball, and then there’s who he was as a person,” said Jones, Chichester High’s head boys basketball coach and a former head coach under Curry at Penn Wood. “In terms of basketball, he was one of the most cerebral players I’ve ever been around. His attention to detail and how he wanted to play separated him from everyone else. And as a person, he cared so much about the kids he mentored. He wanted to make sure they could have something better in life. He was a different dude when it came to the mentality of life and basketball.”
Jones remembered his more than 20-year friendship with Curry in a Twitter post Friday, saying, “Rap Curry is and will always remain a special part of my life.”
He said he had talked on the phone with Curry on May 9, discussing topics relating to the Del Val League. He added that Curry went into the hospital the next day, but Jones didn’t know about it until later.
The two had met at Pepper Middle School when both worked there. Curry, who hadn’t been a part of basketball since his Saint Joe days, got interested in the way Jones — who at the time was Harriton’s boys basketball coach — would break down video of games. Curry started coming out to practices, the plan being he would join the team as an assistant. But that’s when he took a positive detour.
“He got a call to come to Widener and be an assistant for Dave Duda,” Jones said. “And then he got the (head coaching) job at Penn Wood and became the AD after that.”
That done, Curry wasted little time in talking Jones into taking the Patriots’ head coaching job in 2006. It would take them all of three years to win a PIAA state championship.
“He said he wanted to take the program to the next level,” Jones said. “So that’s what we did. But he was a big part of that. … We just had a great relationship, both in ball and in business together. He was like a brother to me.”
Curry struck a lot of people like that.
“Rap was a joyful and charismatic person, who made an impact both on the court, and in people’s lives,” former Saint Joseph’s athletics director Don DiJulia said via a university statement. “He was the whole package; loyal, caring and faith-filled.”
Upon his induction into the Big 5 Hall, Curry described what it meant to him to play in the Palestra.
“For me, playing at the Palestra, in high school and in college, was like playing at a different level,” Curry said in 2008. “It had so much meaning for me. It was magical. I felt like every shot I took was going in the basket.”
Many did, just as they had everywhere. When Curry led Penn Wood in the late 1980s, the Patriots were part of a trio of Del Val League teams that were among the best in the state, along with Chester and Glen Mills.
Chester won the 1989 Class AAAA state title, but only after surviving a one-point state semifinal game with then-junior Curry and the Patriots.
They would go out in the first round of the state tournament the next year, but Curry, who would be a three-time All-Delco selection, was named Daily Times Player of the Year after his senior campaign in 1989-90.
All the while, Saint Joseph’s kept a close watch.
“At 6-3, he was doing things that are so common now, but nobody at 6-3 was doing the things that Rap was doing with the basketball then,” said Penncrest head coach Mike Doyle, who at the time of Curry’s recruitment was a graduate assistant at St. Joe’s. “My first reaction was he was the future of basketball. That’s what we really thought.”
Doyle remembered that Curry was also being recruited by Virginia and Oklahoma at the time. Instead, the Hawks landed him.
“So mature, so thoughtful, an ultimate leader,” Doyle said. “We had some real characters on that team. He was the one who kept them in line.”
