Tampa, Florida---You'd never guess it by looking at him, but coach Paul Traynham is about to blow the final whistle on his teaching career. At 68 years old he’s been teaching for 36 years and is already drawing social security.
His heart isn’t quite ready to retire but his knees sure are.
Coach says, “When I was younger I used to participate with the kids. I don't anymore because I have bad knees right now. I call it athletic abuse because I did jogging and just wore my legs out playing softball.
Coach Traynham calls himself a late bloomer. By the time he decided to go back to school to become a teacher he had already been married for ten years and had two children.
He planned to become a high school softball coach but once he finished an internship at an elementary school he knew that’s where he wanted to be.
Coach is known for challenging his young students. 10 year old Sade says she was surprised by this 68 year old.
She says, “He’s really not that old. He may seem old but he’s really like a kid inside. The other day we challenged him to do push ups and he did 40 and we could only do 10.”
Not bad.
But he hasn’t won all of his bets. There was one challenge to raise 10-thousand dollars that left him bald.
He thought they would never do it. He was surprised when they actually raised 16-thousand dollars.
The money was to help build a covered court to protect the students from the hot Florida sun.
The other surprise was when the school named the court in his honor. Coach Traynham says, “This is awesome. I don’t know how we’ve done without it. I’ve done without it and been in the sun for 36 years and it’s incredible to come under this massive building and stay 20 degrees cooler.”
Fifth grader Shante says they don’t know how they’ll do without their coach.
Shante told me, “Iam really, really sad. I really like coach. He's my favorite teacher in the whole school.”
He blows the whistle and the kids line up to give him a final hug.
Coach says he already has plans to come back as a substitute teacher.
Of his 36 year career coach Tranham says he has no regrets.
He tells me, “All I know is if I had to do it all over again, I would do the same thing. This has been a blessing to work with the kids I really have loved it.
Ginger Gadsden, 10 News Anchor