The late John Huard looked like the linebacker he was.
The kind of rugged linebacker who took pleasure and pride in meeting a running back at the line of scrimmage and forcefully driving him into the turf.
He was a two-time first team All-American at the University of Maine and was drafted in the fifth round of the National Football League draft by the Denver Broncos.
He played three seasons with them before moving on to the New Orleans Saints for one year and then to the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes and Toronto Argonauts.
But the Waterville native and only UMaine football player to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame was much more than a talented, hard-nosed linebacker.
Huard always had interesting insights and he did his homework. He was a very intelligent man and an innovator, and was well-versed in a variety of topics. He was a Renaissance man.
No one outworked John Huard. He was passionate about everything he did and put in extra work to reach a goal he had set for himself.
And as a proud Mainer who grew up in an athletic family, Huard never forgot his roots.
His father, Roland “Zip” Huard, was an exceptional hockey player. His brother Ray played baseball at Princeton.
He once said his parents, Roland and Rita, raised him and his three siblings “the right way.”
He followed up his exceptional playing career with an impressive coaching career that included two Canadian college national championships for Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia and a solid seven-year run at Maine Maritime in which he compiled a 30-18 record over his final five years after a 2-15 start his first two seasons.
He left MMA in 1993 after guiding the Mariners to a 9-1 record and a New England Football Conference title in his final season.
He was the head coach of the CFL’s Argonauts for part of a season in 2000 and was the special teams coach for the United States Football League’s Chicago Blitz under Marv Levy, who coached the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowl appearances (1991-94).
Huard was an intense, fiery coach who got the most out of his players. He worked them hard and was fair with them. He held them accountable.
But there was also a lighter side to him.
When he took over as the head coach at Acadia, he soon discovered his players didn’t have travel bags for their football equipment.
So he bought a box of black trash bags and distributed them to his players to be used as travel bags. He instructed them to put tape on their bags with their name or number on it.
“I told them we would be the only school in Canada to get new travel (trash) bags every week,” quipped Huard in a Bangor Daily News story in 2014.
Huard has been inducted to numerous halls of fame including the UMaine and state of Maine Halls and he was the first member of Alfond Stadium’s Ring of Honor.
After getting out of coaching, he eventually wound up in the artificial turf business and he flourished.
He became the distributor of FieldTurf in New England and once said they installed it in over 650 facilities in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states.
He formed his own company, Northeast Turf Hue in South Portland, and was its CEO.
After playing on so many frozen and muddy grass fields along with on hard AstroTurf, Huard embraced the opportunity to try to provide athletes with a better and safer surface to play on.
He was an excellent salesman who had the foresight to see the value of a different artificial turf surface.
He was also a devoted family man, raising three children with wife Helen.
John and Helen closely followed the careers of their children, their eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren, travelling everywhere to watch them perform.
John Huard defied all odds to become the incredible success story he was.
The determined and resilient Huard overcame a number of obstacles to play in the NFL.
He was the consummate overachiever.
He was also humble and generous.
Among his numerous donations was one of close to a million dollars to Acadia University and that paved the way for a new FieldTurf surface at Acadia’s Raymond Field.
He was a special individual who will be sorely missed.
