Bronny James’ ex-teachers, teammates in Ohio recall a kid who ‘wasn’t above anyone else’

BATH TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Carrie Brown was an exasperated middle-school teacher who had a famous student she knew she could count on.

In the fall of 2017, Brown was teaching social studies at Old Trail School, a small, private institution of about 500 children from ages 2 through the eighth grade on a sprawling 62 acres inside Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a few miles northeast of Akron, Ohio.

Each day at recess, as Brown looked out onto the outdoor basketball court at the bottom of an old amphitheater, she watched her sixth-grade students bicker intensely over who should have the ball or take all the shots.

She knew Bronny James was the opposite of that when he was her student the year before, so she asked the seventh grader for help.

“I pulled him aside and said, ‘Hey, would you mind giving up a recess and talking to my sixth graders?’ But I didn’t tell him what to say,” Brown said during a recent tour of the school and visit with several of Bronny’s former teachers and coaches, in which Brown allowed The Athletic into her classroom where she once taught Bronny.

The hallways inside the Old Trail campus building where most classes are taught are long and narrow. The walls are white and the lockers red; there are hooks on both sides for younger students to hang their…