Claremont
He wanted to coach. To do so, he took off the suit, packed the tie and took an overnight job stocking shelves at Walmart so he could find time to coach during the day.
Nowadays, nobody coaches more than Silva, and nobody spends more time at Stevens High School than Silva. Sundays, school vacations and plenty of other days will find his car with the PHINS license plate parked out back.
Not only is Silva the head baseball coach, the head football coach and an assistant varsity boys basketball coach, he also does the laundry.
“Paul has saved the school district literally thousands of dollars over the years by washing all the uniforms himself,” Stevens High athletic director Doug Beaupre recently said. “He can get more out of a set of uniforms than any coach I have ever met.”
Silva is unique in a lot of ways, but his affection for Stevens High is most impressive. He has a job in the system as the online learning coordinator, living in a community and working in a high school that “I love,” he said.
Most schools would not allow a coach to be involved with three sports, but that’s not a problem for Beaupre.
“Paul is one of the most dedicated coaches I have ever met in my life,” he said. “The amount of time that he puts in his coaching is impressive and incredible.”
And the only reason Silva does not coach in the summer is because the Claremont Senior Babe Ruth team he used to coach no long exists.
Silva, 58, had limited athletic ability in high school, only playing junior varsity baseball at Fall Mountain up through his graduation in 1977. From there, he went to the University of New Hampshire for awhile before graduating from Southeastern Academy, a travel and tourism school in Florida.
Silva has had an athletic bloodline working in his favor, put there by his NHIAA Hall of Fame father, Ralph Silva, who coached state championship baseball teams at Fall Mountain and Stevens. Ralph also was a three-sport coach at Charlestown High before the school merged with Alstead and Walpole to form the Fall Mountain Regional School District.
The coaching bug began to bite Silva big time when Dan Poisson put the Claremont Youth Football League together, involving not only Ralph Silva but Paul’s brother, Ken, as well.
“I did that for 11 years, starting in 1990,” Paul Silva said. “Then it was on to the Claremont Middle School, where Ken was the head coach. He asked me to help, and when I did, that really got the juices flowing.”
There were 44 kids playing middle school football at the time, but the high school wasn’t keeping up. Numbers were so low and the on-field beating so frequent that the Stevens varsity program was shut down for two years and did not return to varsity status until 2004. Just a year later, the Cardinals made it to the NHIAA Division IV championship game, losing to Hanover in a narrow contest.
Both Ken and Ralph Silva took a run as head coach of the Stevens football team. Paul has been in charge the past seven years, during which time the Cardinals have reached two state championship games and won one, a Division III title in 2016.
Stevens beat Monadnock and InterLakes-Moultonborough in tournament games that season, two teams that defeated the Cards during the regular season. It came about because “we didn’t turn the ball over seven times like when we played them the first time,” Silva said.
While all coaches have their detractors, the list is pretty small when it comes to Silva. It’s because he is always prepared, stays under control and never talks down to anyone.
“Coach Paul is one of the best people I have ever met,” said Matt Bean, who played for Silva and is now an assistant football coach. “His passion for sports is contagious to players and coaches alike. He treats his team like his family. I always know that if I ever need anything in life, I can go to Coach Paul and he will be there for me.”
Senior football and baseball player Aidan Cahill, one of Stevens’ top students and athletes, expressed similar feelings.
“I believe he is the epitome of what it means to be dedicated to one’s job,” Cahill said. “He cares deeply not only about the sports he is involved with, but about each player that he dedicates himself to lead.”
Silva admitted that coaching all the school year is a bit taxing, and he appreciates the break in the summer.
“But, hey this coaching thing keeps me out of trouble,” he said.