After 380 career wins, 11 state championship appearances, eight state titles, and heaven knows how many forged relations, Reidsville (N.C.) High School football coach Jimmy Teague ’80 is calling it a career. Sort of.

Jimmy announced his retirement as the school’s longtime coach – 28 years sandwiched around one season at Greensboro College and a high school in Virginia – though he hopes to volunteer with Reidsville in some fashion next year. 

Jimmy said he started thinking about stepping down over the December holiday break. “I wanted time away from school to give it some serious thought,” he says. “I didn’t want to make a rash decision I might regret down the road. I know it’s time.”

Jimmy never had a losing record at Reidsville and only missed the playoffs one time – in 1999 despite finishing 7-4. He won 339 games at the school.

He says he’s not going to miss Friday nights in the fall as much as he will the relationships that form every season with the student-athletes and the coaching staff. “I may never get over that,” he says. “Just building those relationships out of nothing with the kids was always so special. Probably one of the main reasons I kept coming back the last few years.”

Jimmy, who this week was named to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association's Hall of Fame,  says Guilford helped prepare him for teaching and coaching high school students. “Guilford helped prepare me for the next 43 years of my life,” says Jimmy. “I got so much from the school and a lot of my professors. I’m incredibly thankful.”

His first job after graduating from Guilford was as an assistant at Pine Forest High School in Fayetteville, N.C. He stayed there for three years before taking a similar position at Cummings High School in Burlington and then securing his first head coaching job at Garinger High School in Charlotte.

Jimmy could have stayed longer at Garinger, a big school in a big city. But ever since leaving Guilford, he knew the type of school and city he wanted to coach at. “One of my first goals as a football coach was to end up coaching at a small town where football was everything, the biggest thing in town.”

In Reidsville, about 28 miles north of Greensboro, Jimmy found the perfect match. “Very seldom we would go out and not have someone talk to us about the last game,” says Jimmy. “Even if it was for a cup of coffee or at church, football always seemed to come up. I didn’t mind. That’s what I came here for.”