PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles High School has picked Bret Curtis to be the next leader of its football program.
Curtis’ hiring, which was approved by the Port Angeles School Board at its meeting Thursday, ends a search that began in January after the December resignation of previous coach Tom Wahl.
Curtis is no stranger to Port Angeles and its football.
He moved to Port Angeles in 1992 and has been a teacher in the school district for over 20 years — he’s currently a history teacher at the high school — and coached the Stevens Middle School football team from
2000-2008.
“I thought that it was something that I could do and make a difference,” Curtis said of why he wanted to coach the Roughriders.
Before teaching at Port Angeles High School, he was a teacher at Stevens Middle School for 15 years and at Hamilton Elementary for five years.
Curtis graduated from Orcas Island High School and went on to play two years of football at Yakima Valley Community College and two more years at Western Washington University.
Curtis takes over a program that finished 5-6 last season and had its first taste of the postseason since 2011, advancing to a three-team Olympic League tiebreaker in which the Roughriders defeated Sequim in a half-game before falling to Kingston in another half-game.
Counting the half-game victory, Port Angeles has won three straight contests against rival Sequim.
Wahl went 23-28 in five seasons as the head coach of the Roughriders.
Curtis served as an assistant under Wahl from 2010-11, as well as under previous Port Angeles coaches Keith Moorman and Mark Greenleaf.
Earlier this year, Curtis coached the Port Angeles girls basketball C team.
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Sports Editor Lee Horton can be reached at 360-417-3525 or at lhorton@peninsuladailynews.com.
