After a long career teaching, and more years on top of that making sure schedules are compiled, busses are assigned and media notified of Taylorville High School athletic achievements, Paul Held isn’t done giving back.

Because of all the jobs he's had — teacher, coach, official, athletic director — he has a new title: Hall of famer. The 60-year-old was inducted into the Illinois Athletic Directors Association Hall of Fame earlier this month.

“I've been (to the IADA banquets) before, but it's a little different when they're talking about you being this person that people admired and people said, ‘That's a guy to follow. That's a guy to emulate and do things that way,’” Held said. “It's a little different whenever they're talking about you being one of those people. So, it was quite an honor. It was really overwhelming, quite frankly, to be put in that category with all the other people that are on that plaque.

Only one other athletic director on the plaque is from The State Journal-Register's coverage area. Former Southeast AD Larry Chaney was inducted in 2006. The first class of inductees was honored in 1996.

Held said being an athletic director, which lasted from 2005-20, was a labor of love.

“You have to love doing it or else you'll go crazy, because it takes a lot of your time,” Held said. “You're going to do it better the more time you spend, and so you have to have your support system in place, and I did with my wife and my family that allowed me to do that work.

“I loved every bit of it. There was only a couple, a handful of things that really were kind of a chore, but everything else was done with love.”

Former Taylorville educator and principal Tom Campbell was there on May 4 as Held was inducted. Campbell worked with Held for years at Taylorville High School and was the school’s principal from 1997-2010.

“The athletic director has a wide field he touches and experiences,” Campbell said. “They deal not just with the kids and the student-athletes, but also facilities and parents and community. Their fingers are in all the pies because they need to be to be successful.

“Paul was just excellent — first of all, just working with kids; whether they were athletes or not. As a math teacher, he was one of my top teachers and was just very good and skillful there. I hated losing him in the classroom, but I knew he’d do an excellent job as athletic director.”

Love of sports drove him

Held, a 1983 Morrisonville High School graduate, grew up with a passion for sports, whether it was playing them, coaching or watching. His classroom walls were adorned with flags and memorabilia for the St. Louis Cardinals and Blues.

He absorbed everything he could, not knowing one day those skills would be perfect for a future job.

"I don't consider myself a sportswriter by any stretch, (but) my brothers, they used to coach baseball in Morrisonville’s summer league,” Held said. “They basically had to write their own stories for the (now-closed Morrisonville Times) so that the paper could print (results). I had graduated college and started coaching Little League down there (and one brother) said, ‘You're going to have to do this yourself now.’ Then you had a whole different look of how the information about a game and about a team became important.”

A friendship with former Breeze-Courier sports editor Jeff Hill also proved invaluable.

“You needed to know how the kids' names were pronounced and how it should look, how it's spelled and everything else,” Held said. “And that the number on the rosters you give out so that people can see what number somebody is, that the accuracy of that is highly important. (Hill) also let me know the things that they needed. I just took those lessons in, I applied them and said, ‘I got to do this for everybody, even if they're coming from Jacksonville or if they're coming from Decatur or Springfield or anywhere they're coming from.’

“They need that information. It's not like it's a state secret. They're going to give you the roster before the game. Your job is to make sure the people that need that, get that.”

When Held was coaching baseball, softball and girls tennis at Taylorville, and for most of his first decade as AD, the Tornadoes were in the Central State Eight Conference before moving to the Apollo. He said former Lanphier AD Chad Roseboom was also a big influence early in his career.

"The very first person that ever that I talked to, and I probably talked to him a half hour, and why he should take a half hour out of his day to do that, but Chad Roseboom was at Lanphier then,” Held said. "As far as I'm concerned, he gave me my first big lesson in being an athletic director.”

Still not done

Held knew that the 2019-20 school year was his last as athletic director. The pandemic came in March and, all of a sudden, an athletic director had no athletics which to direct. That preview of retirement didn’t sit well with Held.

“Well, that was one thing about the pandemic: it kind of showed me I'm not wired to just sit around and do nothing,” Held said. “And I had to do something, and I enjoy (teaching). I still like bringing something that was previously unknown to somebody and kind of showing them how it works. And then them going a little further with it. That's the thrill of teaching; it's an easy fire to get going again.”

So Held, whose first job teaching after he graduated from Illinois State University was at Athens in 1987 before moving to Taylorville two years later, returned to teach advanced placement calculus and statistics at North Mac High School in Virden after 16 years outside of the classroom.

Now living in St. Charles, Missouri, he teaches middle school math at Holy Cross Academy in Webster Groves , a suburb of St. Louis.

Even a stroke in December 2023 couldn’t force him into retirement. He underwent rehab treatment in Omaha, Nebraska, until March 2024 and has since returned to full-time teaching.

“I can't run anymore, I can’t officiate. I have some weakness in my left side, but I can teach well, I can use my voice well, and my thoughts and all that stuff are all good,” Held said.

Held reminisces on his former days and credited the love of the job with his want to treat people with hospitality and, “representing Taylorville the best I could.”

Campbell added, “He lived the job. He was dedicated to it, he loved what he did, he loved the kids, and sometimes, that carries you through. He’s always done a super, super job.”

Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, , Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.