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Rich Curtis of Briny Breezes, enjoying a game with his friend Ron Vaughn, has played shuffleboard for 12 years. It took him only a year to qualify as a pro. Now he has earned induction into the Southeast Coast District Hall of Fame of the Florida Shuffleboard Association. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star

Briny Breezes seasonal resident Rich Curtis admits he gets some strange looks when he tells people in his hometown of Templeton, Massachusetts, that he’s a professional shuffleboard player in Florida.
“A lot of people laugh when I say I’m a state pro,” said Curtis, who portrayed a very different image during his 28 years working in the state prison system. “It’s like, ‘State pro in shuffleboard? Yeah, OK.’”
Curtis, 68, was introduced to the sport 12 years ago during a visit with the mother of his wife, Mary, who also lived in Briny Breezes. Now he is about to be inducted into the Southeast Coast District Hall of Fame of the Florida Shuffleboard Association.
“I enjoy it,” he said of a game that is a favorite pastime of many South Florida seniors. “It’s what I do more than anything when I’m down here. We go up to the courts almost every night.”
Curtis started out in quarter games, in which two players face off for three games and the loser gives the winner a quarter. Pretty soon his mother-in-law took him to a tournament “and I was hooked,” he said.
Points are awarded in district tournaments; Curtis competes mostly on courts in Hollywood, Davie, Deerfield Beach and Briny Breezes. Compiling five points qualifies a player to become a state amateur, and a first-place finish with at least five points makes him a pro. Then he starts compiling Masters points, and players reaching 200 qualify for Hall of Fame status.
It took only one year for Curtis to reach pro status, but since then, he said, the game has gotten more difficult.
“Some of these pros are kind of nasty,” he said. “They’re out for blood.”
The game, the origins of which date to ancient England, is played on a court 6 feet wide by 39 feet long. Each player gets four discs, each 6 inches in diameter, and a two-pronged metal shooting stick. The object is to slide your discs into the 6-by-9-foot scoring area while knocking your opponent’s discs out of it.
“There’s all sorts of strategy,” Curtis said. “You can do nothing more than clear your opponent off the court and shoot your last disc, but that’s boring. It’s more fun to put up a hide and work from there.”
A hide refers to the art of maneuvering one disc behind one or more others to make it difficult for an opponent to knock it out.
Curtis won the district Masters title in 2017, a tournament featuring the top eight pros where everyone plays everyone else and the player with the most wins comes out on top.
“Then the next year I came in last,” he said. “If you’re having a bad day, or if you’re thinking about something else, you’re not going to play well.”

— Brian Biggane

Q: Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
A: We moved around a lot so I went to somewhere between nine and 17 different schools growing up, but I graduated from Burncoat High School in Worcester.
My dad was a salesman for Look magazine until it finally folded when I was finishing sixth grade. I was always the new kid on the block, so I wasn’t very outgoing. That’s changed a lot since graduation, but I’m still kind of quiet and listen more than I speak.

Q: What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
A: My parents moved to Florida the day after I graduated, but I stayed up there and went to work for a pizza chain, Papa Gino’s, and joined their management program. I worked at five different stores and became a manager after Mary and I got married. It was a good place to work, but too many hours, close to 80-90 a week.
The best job I had was 28 years working in the prison system. I went up the ranks from corrections officer to sergeant to lieutenant to captain and had 150-175 staff beneath me and close to 1,050 inmates. I was at North Central Correctional Institution in Gardner, Massachusetts.
I also worked 30 years as an EMT and one time there was an escape. So, they had me come in and do a presentation for a couple of the commissioners on what they were doing wrong, and my group was brought in to work with the superintendents across the state.
I’m still involved with emergency management. I tried to quit when we came down here seasonally, but they didn’t let me. If there’s an emergency I’m the one who starts the declaration, I sit down here and do my work. With Zoom we can do so much.
Being involved in emergency services is my thing, it’s what I do. I don’t get paid for it, but volunteering for the town in emergency management is the way I give back. And I’ve brought in more than $100,000 in grants since 2008. I’ll keep doing it until they kick me out.

Q: What advice do you have for a young person seeking a career today?
A: Select a field of work that has good benefits, a retirement package, and that you enjoy working at. You don’t have to have a college degree to have a happy and comfortable life.

Q: How did you choose to make your home in Briny Breezes?
A: My wife and I are third generation here in Briny Breezes. My wife’s parents and grandparents and an aunt and uncle all had places here. We would visit on vacation and liked it here. One year we rented two doors down. At one point Mary’s mother couldn’t make it down anymore, so we started coming and took it over.

Q: What is your favorite part about living in Briny Breezes?
A: Shuffleboard is my favorite activity, but there are many available. I have even gotten into making segmented bowls at the Chiselers Club. I’ve made seven or eight bowls, and if I need to repair something I’ll go down there. It’s handy.

Q: What book are you reading now?
A: Skeeter Jones, by Ronald “Butch” Vaughn, who lives here in Briny Breezes and is one of my best friends. It starts out based on a true story, but then he uses his imagination. It’s about a man who killed three people, but what happened after that is made up. He uses very similar names to people he knows. For example, I was a sheriff but instead of Curtis it was Kurtz.

Q: What music do you listen to when you want to relax? When you want to be inspired?
A: Everything but rap and heavy metal. One bluegrass group I like is the Kruger Brothers. We used to go to a lot of bluegrass festivals and they were always there. I’ve even taken up the banjo but haven’t gotten very far.

Q: Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?
A: My parents got me to the point where I could be responsible, so there’s that. But believe me, the prison system is one place you’re on your own. A lot of it might be a byproduct of moving so much growing up.

Q: If your life story were to be made into a movie, who would play you?
A: When I watch movies and listen to music, I don’t pay attention to the names of characters and musicians. Just never got into it.

Q: Who/what makes you laugh?
A: My wife, family and good friends. They all make life good. Comedians I like are people like Jay Leno, Jonathan Winters, George Burns. That’s what I grew up with.