Usually, a coach who has been in the same place for 31 years and has had plenty of success gets to choose to go out on his own terms.

Coaches like Paul “Bear” Bryant, Joe Paterno and Bobby Cox immediately come to mind.

But Johnny Lee Hoffpauir didn’t get that chance. He was kicked out on his butt by the Concordia Parish School Board.

Hoffpauir had retired from his teaching position at Vidalia High School to focus on his new job working with Vidalia’s new recreation complex.

However, when he retired from teaching, he told the board he wanted to come back and coach the baseball team for one more season.

It seemed like a reasonable request. After all, Hoffpauir has been an institution at Vidalia High, winning a state championship and having several of his players going on to play college and professional baseball.

Hoffpauir just wanted one more season to enjoy coaching high school baseball and say his goodbyes.

And he was willing to do it without any pay.

Vidalia High School Principal Rick Brown and Superintendent Loretta Blankenstein agreed that Hoffpauir deserved one more year in the dugout.

Both of them recommended to the school board that Hoffpauir stay on to coach one final season.

But, unfortunately, the board decided that 31 years of coaching really didn’t mean that much, and voted against Hoffpauir returning to the team.

The vote was 5-2 against Hoffpauir returning, with Raymond Riley, Fred Butcher, Mary Campbell, Daryl Price and Darlene Baker voting against Hoffpauir returning and Deanie Collier and Martha Rabb for Hoffpauir.

Gary Parnham abstained from voting and Ronnie Bradford was absent.

Hoffpauir said he was told the school board didn’t want a non-faculty head coach on staff, but he wasn’t buying that excuse.

“Over half the coaches in the parish are non-faculty,” Hoffpauir said. “In the recent past, Vidalia has had a non-faculty head coach in another sport.”

Could the school board seriously have given a more lame excuse?

I guess they could have said they don’t want short men with beards coaching their teams. That would have been more lame, but only slightly so.

There are plenty of coaches at several area schools who are not on the teaching staff and are coaching on either a volunteer basis or for a small salary.

If you required someone on the faculty to coach every sport, you’d have to eliminate some sports because there wouldn’t be enough qualified people to coach the teams.

And shouldn’t the school board be pleased that someone would be willing to spend their time to coach one of their teams?

Hoffpauir has no children on the team anymore. Now that he is retired from teaching, he has no obligation to coach baseball.

But he wants to because he loves the sport and loves teaching the game to young players.

I would have thought that sort of attitude would be applauded, but apparently not by the Concordia Parish School Board.

Instead, it is apparent that some on the board just personally don’t like Hoffpauir and didn’t want to see him coaching any longer.

It was an embarrassing and disgraceful way to end such a distinguished coaching career.

After 31 years, Hoffpauir deserved much better.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Democrat. He can be reached at sports@natchezdemocrat.com, or by phone at 601-445-3632.