Streator’s J.T. Huey hopes to help others win the game of life

After J.T. Huey graduated from Streator High School in 1999, he started his search for his life plan.

“I originally wanted to be a submariner, and I started testing for the Navy the summer after graduation, but the math scared me,” Huey said. “I ended up going to Illinois Valley Community College, but I quickly didn’t feel I belonged there and part of that probably was the fact that I wasn’t at the maturity level I needed to be at to be disciplined enough to do the work. It just wasn’t the right path for me.

“I was kind of lost and I really wanted to have an identity. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up and I still don’t. My dad Doug encouraged me, telling me the military would give me discipline and structure, plus a free education. I joined the service and left for Army boot camp in October of 2000.”

Huey, who played soccer and baseball for the Bulldogs, was a longtime assistant and current fourth-year boys soccer head coach as well as the skipper of the girls soccer program since 2011. He began his service at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.

“My first job was an air defense stinger missile operator,” Huey said. “Then I was assigned to Fort Bliss in Texas which is the home of the air defense artillery. At the time it was still NATO-type warfare where there was a risk of enemy aircraft being wherever a situation came up. I was a MANPADS (Man-portable air-defense systems) operator. I would go out in the field, and we’d practice shooting down jets and helicopters.”

Then Sept. 11, 2001, happened.

“I had some various deployments in support of that here in the states at airports and nuclear power plants,” Huey said. “Then before I knew it, my unit was shipping off to Kuwait.”

His deployment as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom was just two days after his daughter, Lydia, was born in November 2003.

Huey’s unit was stationed in the Diyala Province, which at the time was the hotbed of the Iraqi insurgency. He said he and many of his unit had to learn a different style of warfare because Iraq’s air force already had been decimated. His job title changed to Scout and his unit was involved in many security and protection convoy operations.

“We had some very close calls,” Huey said. “There were IEDs (improvised explosive devices) everywhere and we were on the roads and in urban combat. We were on (the Iraqis’) turf, and they’d been fighting there for a long time.”

When he returned from Iraq, Huey was treated for a traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress, injuries and back problems.

“I loved every second of it, but I also paid for it,” Huey said.

During his deployment, Huey had a chance to get his first taste of coaching.

“The base I was at in Iraq was called FOB Caldwell and we were training the new Iraqi army, the good ones,” Huey said. “Part of our responsibility was to build them up again to be able to protect themselves. One day one of our officers asked, ‘Who has played soccer before?’ and I raised my hand. He was like ‘These guys need a soccer team. Can you help them?’ So in my off-duty time, I’d play soccer with these Iraqis. They needed recreation just like we did. This didn’t last for a long period of time, but I really enjoyed it.”

Huey was finally able to return home in January 2005 and started working as a forklift driver for James Hardie Building Products, where he remains today.

“One day after being back home, I saw a little ad in the Times newspaper that Streator High School was looking for an assistant boys soccer coach,” Huey said. “I applied and when I walked into the interview with (former Streator athletic director) Kevin Wargo, there is (former boys soccer coach who Huey played for) Jim Muntz sitting there. I can’t lie, I had a little moment of ‘Oh geez coach.’ Thankfully I got the job, and [Muntz] just embraced me from Day 1.

“I had found the identity I was looking for out of high school as a soldier, but I had lost that. My identity is a husband and father first, and becoming a coach replaced that part of me that was a soldier when I left the service. Coaching was the perfect fit, I’m in charge of people, and I can lead them and inspire them through athletics.”

Streator Athletic Director Nick McGurk said Huey has made a tremendous impact on the students he has coached as well as the community as a whole.

“J.T. was a student when I was just starting my teaching here at Streator High School. But I really got to know him when he was helping coach youth soccer and my daughter, Bridget, was playing,” McGurk said. “He is truly a public servant; a community gem and we are so lucky to have him.”

Huey said the knowledge gained in his military service was the stepping stone to the good person and good coach he strives to be.

“If it’s one kid, five kids or 50 kids that I’ve helped steer or kept on the right path, then I’ll feel I’ve won the game of life,” Huey said. “Hopefully my help will help them win their game too.”