Huntingdon’s Mike Hudy stepping away from coaching @BearcatFB_HAHS

Tagged under: Coaches Corner, District 6, News

Billy Splain | January 26, 2019

The Bearcats will have a new look this year. After 7 seasons as a head coach Mike Hudy is stepping away from coaching. “There’s several factors, one of the main ones is I’ve been doing it for 30 years, my son’s done playing and I wanna go watch him play in college,  start tying flies and hunting again” said Hudy.

During that 30 year stretch, Hudy has been an assistant coach at Bald Eagle Area, Mt. Union, Huntingdon, Juniata College and then again at Huntingdon as a head coach. “It’s a grind and it takes a lot out of you, ten years ago my mother passed, and I took a year off and it kind of rejuvenated me. Mike started coaching in 1989 at SCI Rockview. Then coached at BEA, then to Mt Union. Hudy said one of his great memories was “the 10-0 season they had at Mt Union in 1993”.

His son, Andrew, was a standout player for him, being named twice to the All WesternPAFootball.net team and chosen to the PAFootballnews.com  Coach Select team this year. Andrew will graduate this year and move on to college.  “It was easy coaching him because for one thing he’s a darned good player.” Coaching his son also had it’s challenges. “On the other hand it was tough. I had to be a disciplinarian and that didn’t work. I thought I was going to be his position coach, but I backed away and that was a good thing. I look back and that’s what I had to do. That’s the advice I would give other coaches, but I really enjoyed coaching him.”

Mike leaves with a head coaching record of 39-39, his best a 10-2 record last year but has a lot of good memories. “The thing at Huntingdon with me was when I took over we were 1-9 and didn’t have much talent. Then a few years later we had 10 wins so I got to experience the whole “help it grow” thing.”

“I remember being at Juniata College and we had only 7-8 linemen, one of them got hurt and he was the best linemen and that was it. Things like that made it tough. But I got to coach with some great people. Gawen Stoker at BEA, Jim Zauzig here at Huntingdon. It’s tough to point out just one good memory” said Hudy of the good things he’s been able to experience as a a coach.

“My wife, people don’t realize how much goes into it. It was a lot of stress and she supported me on it. It’s a lot of time and she supported it. I kinda feel like I owe it to her to step down.” Mike chuckled “maybe she’ll want me to get back into it!”

We’ll miss Coach Hudy but we wish him all the joy he can handle.

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