Former Carolina two-sport athlete Ronald Curry held a football camp for kids this past weekend and brought in some other players from the National Football League in an attempt to give back to his hometown community of Hampton, Va.

Having covered Curry from the time he committed to UNC through the timing day at which he ran for pro scouts, I would never be surprised by good news about Curry.

Curry is one of the finest representatives to wear a Carolina uniform in any sport. Throughout his career, Curry carried himself with dignity and dealt with others in a fashion that should make Carolina officials proud. Nonetheless, when it comes to Curry, the one thing that will always bother me is this young man will probably never get the credit he deserves for all he did to keep the two main sports at UNC above water.

When his time came to start at point guard, he made Matt Doherty the national coach of the year and postponed a losing season.

As good a player as Julius Peppers was in basketball — and Pep was outstanding in every way — the single individual who made the biggest difference in 2001 was Curry.

Adam Boone and Brian Morrison were trying to play the point while Curry was performing as quarterback for a football program he was keeping afloat.

On Dec. 2, 2000, Kentucky hammered the Tar Heels 93-76 in the Smith Center. Doherty, in his first season as head coach, came to the press room afterward and immediately apologized to the UNC fans for the poor performance. The Tar Heel guards had thrown the ball into the stands, to the Wildcats, dribbled it off their feet. They had done everything with it except get it to the Tar Heels in scoring position.

Michigan State had defeated UNC the game before Kentucky and manhandled the Tar Heels.

In addition to poor offensive guard play in those two games, a common thread was the inability of Carolina to put effective (for that matter, any) ball pressure on the opposing point guard, which is a key to defense in basketball.

On Dec. 4, Curry wore his basketball uniform and became the Tar Heels' point guard. He did not come on the floor trying to score points. He did what champions before him had done, players such as Jimmy Black and Derrick Phelps. He pressured the ball and got it to his teammates in good position to score.

The Tar Heels won 18 straight games, defeated Duke in Durham and ascended to the No. 1-ranking in the national polls.

Had Doherty been more experienced and understood a little better how to handle that team, who knows what it may have done. As it was, Carolina finished in a tie for first in the regular season, made it to the ACC Tournament championship game before getting blown out by Duke and then lost in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to Penn State in New Orleans.

The next season, Curry did not play basketball. He spent his time preparing for the NFL draft. Without him, the foreshadowing of the previous year's games against Michigan State and Kentucky became a shocking reality to the coaches, players and fans at UNC.

A program that had been to a record 27 consecutive NCAA Tournaments and had finished third or better in the conference for more than 30 years, went 8-20.

UNC could not guard the ball or perform for any length of time without turning it over. The year before, Doherty had looked at Boone and Morrison and said, 'See what he's doing,'" referring to Curry. "'He's just guarding the ball and passing it without turning it over.'"

Just.

In football, Curry became the starter four plays into his true freshman season when quarterback Oscar Davenport suffered a knee injury against Miami of Ohio in the opening game.

Rather than utilize the best running quarterback at Carolina since a man named Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice played a similar position in the old single-wing formation, the offensive coordinator played scared that night.

He actually kept Curry from running, similar to the way the offensive staff kept Joe Daily from running last fall, and with comparable results. UNC lost 13-10 to a Miami of Ohio team that could not have stopped Curry had he been turned loose to run.

In his four seasons at Carolina, the Tar Heels had one losing record in football. It occurred in 1999, when Curry tore an Achilles' tendon against Georgia Tech and missed the final six games.

Twice in his career, Curry was named the most valuable offensive player in a bowl game. His senior season, he had a horrible start against Oklahoma in the opening game and a red-shirt freshman named Darian Durant came on to play well. Fans wanted Coach John Bunting to bury Curry on the bench.

Bunting refused, and as Curry had done for Doherty, the youngster from Virginia helped to make Bunting's first season a success. Whenever Curry and Durant played together, UNC won. When either played alone, Carolina lost.

Curry was not the passer Durant proved to be, but Curry spent three and a half seasons as the Tar Heels' running game. Durant discovered in 2002 and '03 just how difficult it is to play quarterback without a running game.

Curry spent his career eluding rushers.

Eventually, Curry set the school's career record for total offense, yet the ugliest day of his time in Chapel Hill happened when the crowd at Kenan Stadium booed him as a senior, just as they had once booed quarterback Mike Thomas.

Unfortunately, too many of the fans and too much of the media never appreciated Curry and everything he did to keep two key programs afloat.

But the ingratitude enabled Curry to reveal perhaps his greatest quality of all. He handled himself without bitterness and with all the class any school could ask from a student athlete.

The University of North Carolina is better for having a graduate named Ronald Curry. I just hope that as time passes, the people who follow UNC athletics will look back and realize how important he was. I'll guarantee you the men who coached him do.