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Sunday
March 21, 2010 Since 1922 |
Realignment pits father against son
By Dave Rogers
The Baytown Sun Published February 6, 2010 ANAHUAC — Darrell Barbay wasn’t surprised when he opened up the UIL realignment envelope Monday and saw that Class 2A, where his Anahuac Panthers play, had been split in half for football.
“We knew they were going to do that,” he said. “The superintendents had voted on it.”
However, the easygoing soon-to-be fourth-year Panthers head coach felt his pulse quicken when it was confirmed that Anahuac was being placed in a district with perennial powerhouse Newton.
You’d expect Barbay to be upset about going from a seven-member district (23-2A) where his team was fighting for one of three playoff spots to an eight-team division (10-2A) where only two teams will see the postseason.
He is.
You’d expect him to be concerned that the new 10-2A lineup contains five teams that made last fall’s Class 2A playoffs — Anahuac, Buna, East Chambers, Newton and Woodville.
Not so much.
You’d expect him not to be excited about making a 115-mile road trip every other year to play at Newton, which is located approximately 80 miles north of Beaumont in the Piney Woods just west of the Louisiana border.
That’s so wrong.
It’s wrong because of the man who will be standing on the opposite side of the playing field.
Barbay’s dad, 68-year-old Curtis Barbay, is the Newton head coach, just as he’s been for most of Darrell’s 38 years on this planet.
“I’ve been coaching for a while and I’ve never had the opportunity to coach against my dad,” Darrell said. “That will be interesting.”
Growing up
Darrell Barbay grew up with an older brother (Bryan, 41), an older sister (Kelly, 43) and football.
“When we were little, Bryan and I grew up at the Newton field house,” he said. “We were ballboys and went to all of Dad’s games. We’d ride the (team) bus to away games. We’d go up there on Saturdays and Sundays with Dad.
“And in the summers, if Mom had to do something, we’d just ride to work with Dad and we’d go all around the high school, playing catch or basketball.”
Every member of the Barbay household could hold their own when it came time to drawing Xs and Os and talking football with dad – even Kelly and their mom, Mona.
“Mom really gets carried away,” Darrell said. “I think she probably wants to win more than he does.”
But Curtis Barbay didn’t often bring his job home to his family.
“Daddy’s real good about that. That’s probably the reason he’s survived so long in this business. To him, a loss is just a loss and a win is just a win,” Darrell said.
And there’s no place like Newton.
“A lot of kids in coaching families have to move every four or five years. We were very fortunate,” Darrell said. “We have a place we can call home. We’ve always been able to go back home.
“Dad never left. He stayed there. I think probably the main reason he did was for us.”
All the Barbay children graduated from Newton High and earned their degrees from Stephen F. Austin State in Nacogdoches, which is across the Angelina National Forest and Lake Sam Rayburn from Newton.
Kelly became an accountant and is now working for Huntsman in Brazosport.
Both Bryan and Darrell followed their dad into coaching football.
“When Bryan and I got into college and decided that’s what we wanted to do, I remember going to clinics and listening to Daddy talk. Bryan and I did some scouting for him,” Darrell said.
Port Arthur roots
Curtis Barbay grew up in the oil refining town of Port Arthur, a few years ahead of two of its more famous ex-residents — football coach Jimmy Johnson and blues rock singer Janis Joplin. He didn’t join them in public school, though, attending Bishop Byrne High School instead.
Those days you couldn’t grow up in Port Arthur without playing football, but he never planned to coach.
Blame it on credits and debits.
“I was an accounting major and all those problems we had, that changed my mind in a hurry,” the elder Barbay quipped. “I just wanted to do something I liked to do every day, and that’s the way it’s always been.
“I get up and look forward to going to work.”
Bob Boyd, the well-traveled father of Goose Creek Memorial coach Bret Boyd, is one of the better known coaching names in Texas high school football. Barbers Hill called two-time state champion coach Ronnie Gage a “legend” when it introduced him last month as its new coach – and his name does have a lofty cachet up in the Dallas area, where he’s put in three decades.
But if you measure success by wins – and certainly fans do – Curtis Barbay is a coaching giant in the Lone Star State.
After a 12-2 season last fall in which Newton reached the state semifinals and lost to eventual 2A champ Daingerfield, Barbay ranks No. 4 on the list of Texas’ all-time winningest high school football coaches.
His 35 Newton teams have won 314 games, lost 95 and tied 6 since Barbay was elevated to head coach in 1975.
Curtis Barbay began his coaching career with three years as an assistant at Bishop Byrne, then moved to Newton in 1968. He was an assistant to Lidney Thompson in 1974 when Newton won a 2A state title, the town’s first.
Thompson immediately left for other challenges and Barbay replaced him as head coach. Under Barbay, the Eagles have won 20 outright district championships, tied for three others and qualified for the playoffs 28 times, including a current streak of 15 years in a row.
Newton has been as far as the state quarterfinals seven times under Barbay, to the semifinals five times and played in three state title games, winning crowns in Class 3A in 1998 and in 2A in 2005.
The Eagles have had only three losing seasons under Barbay.
Only 70-year-old G.A. Moore (416 wins and counting), the late Gordon Wood of Brownwood (395 wins) and Calallen coach Phil Danaher (354 and counting) have more wins in Texas than Barbay.
Newton posted a record of 101-26 in the decade just ended despite losing seven regular-season games to hurricanes and other bad weather.
Career choice
Curtis Barbay says he didn’t want his sons to go into coaching.
“But the two followed along in my footsteps. I tried to tell them different,” he said. “But coaching’s been good to me. It’s the best thing in the world that happened to me.
“I’ve never made much money here, but I’ve been happy and I ain’t never complained.”
Bryan is currently the head coach at Coldspring. Before that, he was an assistant at Orangefield and Kirbyville when those teams played against Newton.
When Anahuac and Newton square off this season – the game is tentatively set for Oct. 29 at Anahuac – it will be the first time Darrell Barbay has lined up on the other side of the field from his dad, the first time Curtis has coached against either son since they became head coaches.
“You’ve got mixed emotions whenever you play against your own kids,” the elder Barbay said, recalling those earlier games when Bryan was an opposing assistant coach.
“They both do a good job,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of good traits. I think both of them are good disciplinarians. That’s where it all starts from. If you’ve got discipline, you’ve got a chance.”
Darrell spent six years as an assistant coach – one at Little Cypress-Mauriceville, one at Livingston and four at Jasper – before his first head coaching job at Hull-Daisetta.
“The one thing I learned from him and about dealing with kids in general,” Darrell said, “is to always be fair. If you treat kids all the same, parents don’t have anything to get upset about.”
At Hull-Daisetta, Barbay’s eight teams went 51-35 and went to the playoffs five times. He came to Anahuac in 2007 and, after a 2-8 initiation, he has led the Panthers to back-to-back 8-3 playoff seasons, including an outright district title in 2008.
Darrell and his dad were together Thursday, when coaches and athletic directors of the new District 10-2A tentatively set up their schedules for the next two falls.
You can bet both Barbays circled Oct. 29 on their calendars.
“They’re always going to have good players at Newton,” the Anahuac coach said, “and I think we’ll be very competitive. It’s going to be a tough little district.
“But I don’t see us all of a sudden not making the playoffs or anything like that.”
The Baytown Sun Published February 6, 2010 ANAHUAC — Darrell Barbay wasn’t surprised when he opened up the UIL realignment envelope Monday and saw that Class 2A, where his Anahuac Panthers play, had been split in half for football.
“We knew they were going to do that,” he said. “The superintendents had voted on it.”
However, the easygoing soon-to-be fourth-year Panthers head coach felt his pulse quicken when it was confirmed that Anahuac was being placed in a district with perennial powerhouse Newton.
You’d expect Barbay to be upset about going from a seven-member district (23-2A) where his team was fighting for one of three playoff spots to an eight-team division (10-2A) where only two teams will see the postseason.
He is.
You’d expect him to be concerned that the new 10-2A lineup contains five teams that made last fall’s Class 2A playoffs — Anahuac, Buna, East Chambers, Newton and Woodville.
Not so much.
You’d expect him not to be excited about making a 115-mile road trip every other year to play at Newton, which is located approximately 80 miles north of Beaumont in the Piney Woods just west of the Louisiana border.
That’s so wrong.
It’s wrong because of the man who will be standing on the opposite side of the playing field.
Barbay’s dad, 68-year-old Curtis Barbay, is the Newton head coach, just as he’s been for most of Darrell’s 38 years on this planet.
“I’ve been coaching for a while and I’ve never had the opportunity to coach against my dad,” Darrell said. “That will be interesting.”
Growing up
Darrell Barbay grew up with an older brother (Bryan, 41), an older sister (Kelly, 43) and football.
“When we were little, Bryan and I grew up at the Newton field house,” he said. “We were ballboys and went to all of Dad’s games. We’d ride the (team) bus to away games. We’d go up there on Saturdays and Sundays with Dad.
“And in the summers, if Mom had to do something, we’d just ride to work with Dad and we’d go all around the high school, playing catch or basketball.”
Every member of the Barbay household could hold their own when it came time to drawing Xs and Os and talking football with dad – even Kelly and their mom, Mona.
“Mom really gets carried away,” Darrell said. “I think she probably wants to win more than he does.”
But Curtis Barbay didn’t often bring his job home to his family.
“Daddy’s real good about that. That’s probably the reason he’s survived so long in this business. To him, a loss is just a loss and a win is just a win,” Darrell said.
And there’s no place like Newton.
“A lot of kids in coaching families have to move every four or five years. We were very fortunate,” Darrell said. “We have a place we can call home. We’ve always been able to go back home.
“Dad never left. He stayed there. I think probably the main reason he did was for us.”
All the Barbay children graduated from Newton High and earned their degrees from Stephen F. Austin State in Nacogdoches, which is across the Angelina National Forest and Lake Sam Rayburn from Newton.
Kelly became an accountant and is now working for Huntsman in Brazosport.
Both Bryan and Darrell followed their dad into coaching football.
“When Bryan and I got into college and decided that’s what we wanted to do, I remember going to clinics and listening to Daddy talk. Bryan and I did some scouting for him,” Darrell said.
Port Arthur roots
Curtis Barbay grew up in the oil refining town of Port Arthur, a few years ahead of two of its more famous ex-residents — football coach Jimmy Johnson and blues rock singer Janis Joplin. He didn’t join them in public school, though, attending Bishop Byrne High School instead.
Those days you couldn’t grow up in Port Arthur without playing football, but he never planned to coach.
Blame it on credits and debits.
“I was an accounting major and all those problems we had, that changed my mind in a hurry,” the elder Barbay quipped. “I just wanted to do something I liked to do every day, and that’s the way it’s always been.
“I get up and look forward to going to work.”
Bob Boyd, the well-traveled father of Goose Creek Memorial coach Bret Boyd, is one of the better known coaching names in Texas high school football. Barbers Hill called two-time state champion coach Ronnie Gage a “legend” when it introduced him last month as its new coach – and his name does have a lofty cachet up in the Dallas area, where he’s put in three decades.
But if you measure success by wins – and certainly fans do – Curtis Barbay is a coaching giant in the Lone Star State.
After a 12-2 season last fall in which Newton reached the state semifinals and lost to eventual 2A champ Daingerfield, Barbay ranks No. 4 on the list of Texas’ all-time winningest high school football coaches.
His 35 Newton teams have won 314 games, lost 95 and tied 6 since Barbay was elevated to head coach in 1975.
Curtis Barbay began his coaching career with three years as an assistant at Bishop Byrne, then moved to Newton in 1968. He was an assistant to Lidney Thompson in 1974 when Newton won a 2A state title, the town’s first.
Thompson immediately left for other challenges and Barbay replaced him as head coach. Under Barbay, the Eagles have won 20 outright district championships, tied for three others and qualified for the playoffs 28 times, including a current streak of 15 years in a row.
Newton has been as far as the state quarterfinals seven times under Barbay, to the semifinals five times and played in three state title games, winning crowns in Class 3A in 1998 and in 2A in 2005.
The Eagles have had only three losing seasons under Barbay.
Only 70-year-old G.A. Moore (416 wins and counting), the late Gordon Wood of Brownwood (395 wins) and Calallen coach Phil Danaher (354 and counting) have more wins in Texas than Barbay.
Newton posted a record of 101-26 in the decade just ended despite losing seven regular-season games to hurricanes and other bad weather.
Career choice
Curtis Barbay says he didn’t want his sons to go into coaching.
“But the two followed along in my footsteps. I tried to tell them different,” he said. “But coaching’s been good to me. It’s the best thing in the world that happened to me.
“I’ve never made much money here, but I’ve been happy and I ain’t never complained.”
Bryan is currently the head coach at Coldspring. Before that, he was an assistant at Orangefield and Kirbyville when those teams played against Newton.
When Anahuac and Newton square off this season – the game is tentatively set for Oct. 29 at Anahuac – it will be the first time Darrell Barbay has lined up on the other side of the field from his dad, the first time Curtis has coached against either son since they became head coaches.
“You’ve got mixed emotions whenever you play against your own kids,” the elder Barbay said, recalling those earlier games when Bryan was an opposing assistant coach.
“They both do a good job,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of good traits. I think both of them are good disciplinarians. That’s where it all starts from. If you’ve got discipline, you’ve got a chance.”
Darrell spent six years as an assistant coach – one at Little Cypress-Mauriceville, one at Livingston and four at Jasper – before his first head coaching job at Hull-Daisetta.
“The one thing I learned from him and about dealing with kids in general,” Darrell said, “is to always be fair. If you treat kids all the same, parents don’t have anything to get upset about.”
At Hull-Daisetta, Barbay’s eight teams went 51-35 and went to the playoffs five times. He came to Anahuac in 2007 and, after a 2-8 initiation, he has led the Panthers to back-to-back 8-3 playoff seasons, including an outright district title in 2008.
Darrell and his dad were together Thursday, when coaches and athletic directors of the new District 10-2A tentatively set up their schedules for the next two falls.
You can bet both Barbays circled Oct. 29 on their calendars.
“They’re always going to have good players at Newton,” the Anahuac coach said, “and I think we’ll be very competitive. It’s going to be a tough little district.
“But I don’t see us all of a sudden not making the playoffs or anything like that.”