By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
Decades after his last wrestling match, local triathlete, cyclist and bike shop owner Bill Hughes will be inducted into the athletic Hall of Fame at Muncy High School in Pennsylvania next month.
Hughes graduated from Muncy High in 1959 after four years on the varsity wrestling squad. He continued his wrestling career at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, where he spent another four years as a varsity wrestler.
Now 80, Hughes runs the Yellow Jersey bike shop in Sitka.
Hughes remembered his time as a wrestler under the instruction of coach Russ Houk.
“It’s sort of what I did. I started off as a freshman as a phenom and was an outstanding wrestler all through high school. And my coach, he moved on to college and he drafted me over to wrestle in college,” Hughes said.
Bill Hughes. (Sentinel Photo)
Houk moved on to serve on the U.S. Olympic Committee and coach freestyle wrestling at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and again in Montreal in 1976.
As a high school freshman, Hughes captured the District IV championship title in Pennsylvania, the same year Muncy won the championship as well, Muncy Hall of Fame committee member Thomas Ritter said in a letter to the Sentinel.
Hughes also played football for Muncy. Ritter described him as “one of the best all-around athletes ever to come out of Muncy High School.”
Hughes and three other Muncy graduates will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at a football game against South Williamsport in Muncy on October 8. Hughes said he plans to attend.
As a college student, Hughes said, he had a wrestling challenge – future Olympian Gray Simons.
“I had a nemesis there, it was Gray Simons and he was in our conference. He was a two-time national outstanding wrestler in the nation and three-time national champion,” Hughes remembered. “We wrestled each other probably six or seven times and I worked with him later on in various wrestling camps after we graduated, so we knew each other pretty well.”
Though the two wrestled together many times, Hughes never came out on top, he said.
Although he couldn’t pull out a win against Simons, Hughes took third place in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics wrestling tournament in 1960 and ’61, Ritter said, and he took second place at the NAIA championships in 1963 in the 120-pound weight class.
Hughes and Simons got a chance for a rematch after their school years.
“I was coaching wrestling in a high school in Pennsylvania and I got a call for an oldtimers’ wrestling meet, a benefit… I figured I wouldn’t have any problem with whoever they put up against me, and here is my nemesis paired against me. He had gone to the Olympics,” Hughes said.
Bill Hughes, 1959. (Photo provided)
Simons wrestled in the 1960 Olympics in Rome and in the 1964 games in Tokyo and was later named the 33rd most important athlete in Virginia by Sports Illustrated, Old Dominion University’s website says. Simons coached at ODU until 2004 before retiring to Virginia Beach.
At the rematch tournament, Hughes lost to Simons yet again, but not before taking him down once.
“And I did take him down that night. I had a signature move where I would dive back down underneath a guy. He was a good take-down guy, I was a good take-down guy too. I could go a whole year without anybody taking me down, except for Gray. He got my leg up in the air and I would dive back under his legs and he jammed me into the mat and I got a concussion,” Hughes said.
After spending some time coaching wrestling and cross country, Hughes earned another degree at Texas A&M and became a fisheries biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It was in this capacity that he moved to Alaska in the 1970s, he said.
“I got a job as a fishery biologist with the government and I ended up on the pipeline working with the government on the oil pipeline back in the ’70s,” Hughes said. “That’s how I got to Alaska. And then I moved down here after the pipeline was finished and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve been doing the bike business for 25 years after I retired.”
During his early years in Alaska, Hughes served as a high school wrestling official, Ritter wrote in his letter.
Hughes remains active. He plans to travel to St. George, Utah, next month to compete in the mountain biking portion of the World Senior Games – an event he has won before.
“We’re going down there in another couple weeks, the beginning of the month – we’ll meet up with a couple of old college friends. We stay down there. The World Senior Games are there, and I’ll do the mountain biking... I ride in the expert division. I usually win,” he said.
While he can no longer train daily, Hughes cycles dozens of miles weekly.
“Biking, that’s all I do now. Probably 50, 60 miles a week, not a lot. In the old days when I was training I would do 100 plus,” he said.
Each Sunday, he and a friend, Dean Orbison, pedal to Green Lake, a round trip of about 30 miles.
Hughes also competes in triathlons. Sitka’s annual Julie Hughes Triathlon is named in memory of Bill and his wife Carol’s daughter, Julie, who died of leukemia at 15 in 1985. The triathlon takes place every spring and, true to form, Hughes competes in the cycling leg of his daughter’s namesake race.
