Mattituck’s Mike Huey earns service award

Receiving a lifetime achievement award in front of your peers certainly is a great honor.

For former Mattituck High School athletic director and coach Mike Huey, it was doubly special.

During the New York State boys soccer championships in Middletown on Sunday, state soccer officials presented Huey with the Ted Woods Memorial New York State Public High School Athletic Association boys soccer service award.

“It was so much because it’s in Ted’s name,” he said. “And it’s quite an honor in itself.”

Huey was honored for 41 years of dedicated service to the state and to Section XI (Suffolk) and 26 years as the county’s boys soccer coordinator.

As it turns out, the Huey already had an intriguing connection with Ted Woods.

Woods was a SUNY/Cortland graduate, as was Huey’s father, Clayton.

While he visited his father in Center Moriches many years ago, Huey was reading Cortland’s Red Dragons magazine. The publication had a story about Woods, who graduated in 1953. Clayton also graduated that year.

According to Huey, the conversation went something like this:

Mike: “Hey, Dad, do you know Ted Woods?”

Clayton: “Yeah, why?”

Mike: “Because I’m on the state committee with him, and we’re pretty good friends.”

Clayton: “Get out of here. He was my roommate in college.”

The next time Mike Huey saw Woods, he brought up the connection.

“Teddy, you know Clayton Huey,” he said, and Woods replied, “Oh, my God, that’s your father. I didn’t put the last name together.”

Such a small world.

“He was such a great guy,” Huey said. “We all looked up to him so much. The committee always referred to him as the voice of reason and wisdom.”

Woods passed away at the age of 88 in 2020.

Accruing honors certainly isn’t foreign to Huey. He is a member of the Center Moriches Athletics Hall of Fame — he was a multi-sport star at the high school — and was inducted into the New York State Soccer Hall of Fame in 2008. He was also named the 2014 state boys tennis coach of the year, Suffolk athletic director of the year twice and county tennis coach of the year eight times.

Huey, who was also a physical education teacher, said that his favorite soccer moment wasn’t about him. It was watching his son Andrew win the 2003 Class C state boys soccer title. Andrew tallied the winning goal in the Long Island championship game and his throw-in set up the insurance goal in a 2-0 triumph in the state final.

Huey is one of only five athletic directors the school has had since Bob Muir was named the first AD in 1936.

“I had good people that I took over from,” he said. “Bob Muir set the pace.”

Current AD Gregg Wormuth praised his predecessor.

“He’s been instrumental in what we do in boys soccer in Suffolk County and at the state level,” he said. “He had a huge influence.

“I walked in here having some pretty big shoes to fill,” Wormuth continued. “I was lucky enough to have Mike available. He continued to stay on as a tennis coach. It was nice to have Mike as a colleague and a friend, and as someone who had done the role, understands what it takes. I was able to bounce things off him.”

After boys soccer coach Joe Vasile-Cozzo left to become Center Moriches AD, Huey, then the Mattituck athletic director, replaced him with one-time Tuckers standout Mat Litchhult.

Litchhult guided the team to a pair of state soccer championships (2003, 2014).

“It’s an award that is very justified for a man who put so many years into not only Suffolk soccer but Mattituck,” Litchhult said. “He’s done it pretty much at every level, as a player, coach, administrator and the head of Section XI.”

The Huey connection even includes the next generation of coaches. Boys soccer head coach Dan O’Sullivan’s aunt, Coreen, married Mike’s twin brother, Jim.

“I’m just so proud,” O’Sullivan said. “He’s a big mentor to a lot of us. I’ve known him my whole life. It was just so cool when I came to Mattituck, to be able to coach under him, and to always to be at the Section XI meetings, the association meetings, on the sideline of games, having him there. He’s a role model. He’s a father figure with a lot of expertise.”