Henry B. Hucles

Henry Boyd Hucles, Jr. was an American football, basketball, and baseball coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Virginia Union University from 1919 to 1920 and again from 1926 to 1942 and at Prairie View A&M University from 1925 to 1926, compiling a career college football record of 101–53–19. Hucles was also the athletic director at Virginia Union from 1926 to 1950. His son, Henry B. Hucles III, became a suffragan bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.
He was inducted into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1997.

Henry Boyd Hucles, Jr. was born in Petersburg, VA on November 11, 1897. In 1917, he studied at Wayland Academy in Washington D.C. before attending studying physics at Virginia Union University from 1919-1920. While at VUU he founded the Zeta chapter of Omega Psi Phi and earned All-American honors as a quarterback for the Virginia Union Panthers. As a senior, he was player-coach for the team. He graduated with a BSc from Springfield College in 1933. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Richmond Coliseum. He died in Brooklyn, NY on September 11, 1979.

Hucles became the first VUU student athlete to then become a coach at the school, serving as the player football coach from 1919-1920 and then as the head football coach from 1926-1942 as well as Athletic Director and a professor of Health and Physical education. From 1938 to 1943, he also served as Virginia Union University's basketball coach, leading the team to a CIAA title in the 1938/39 season. From 1942 to 1943, future MLB and Hall of Famer Larry Doby, played on the VUU basketball team under Hucles.

In 1921, he spent a year coaching at Shaw University.

Hucles was the first head football coach at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas and he held that position for two seasons, from 1924 until 1925. His career coaching record at Prairie View was 11–4–1.

He died in Brooklyn, New York in 1979.

Hucles's papers are available to researchers at Virginia Union University's Archives and Special Collections located in the L. Douglas Wilder Library and Learning Resource Center.