You could fill a page with a listing of Letitia Hughley’s high school athletic accomplishments. But, truth is, you could summarize all of them in two words: Zero losses. Hughley was a member of six state championship teams at Northern and never once played on a losing team. In basketball, Hughley helped Northern go 74-0 during her three seasons, winning a state title each time. In track and field, she also was a member of three consecutive state championship teams that never lost so much as a dual meet. Yet, during it all, Hughley never stopped to think about the legacy she and her teammates were building.
“You know, it wasn’t until later in life that I really thought about it,” Hughley said. “Someone asked me about it one day – was asking me about never losing a game – and I honestly hadn’t really thought about it. “All I was really thinking (in high school) was having fun and going home.”
For Hughley, sports have never been a chore – not as a young child growing up in Georgia, or after she moved to Flint and got more involved in a competitive athletic environment. And she never took the easy way out. “I was always competing against boys, even when I was younger and going up against my siblings,” she said. “We’d play baseball, basketball, run races against each other. Our whole family was like that.”
After Hughley moved to Flint from Waycross, Ga., when she was 12, she walked into a local gym where a bunch of boys were playing basketball. She quickly joined in, thus taking the first informal step toward her future as an elite player. Hughley was a pass-first point guard on Northern’s girls basketball juggernaut that had won a state title her freshman year. She joined the varsity as a sophomore – teaming up with the likes of the McGee twins (Pamela and Paula) – and was an integral part of the next three titles.
“Point guard was definitely my preferred position because, at that time, I wasn’t a scorer and it wasn’t important to me to score,” she said. “I knew how to get the ball into the hands of our scorers and, to me, that was my job.” Still, Hughley could provide firepower. In the 1980 Class A semifinals, she scored 37 points in a win over previously unbeaten Detroit Murray Wright. It was a performance that Hughley said was partly inspired by off-season basketball.
“I played AAU ball with girls from Murray Wright, and my senior year was going to be our first without the McGee sisters,” she said. “A lot of those players were telling me how our time was up, that we wouldn’t win another championship without the twins. That provided a lot of motivation for me my senior year. And I told all of my teammates at Northern what people outside the program thought of us and our chances to win another state championship.”
In her final game for the Vikings, Hughley helped seal the state title win over Jackson with free throws in the final minute. And by then, she was a coveted college basketball recruit. Hughley accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Washington (“I like to travel and I had never seen that part of the country,’ she said) and became a four-year starter for the Huskies. By the time she left, she ranked among the all-time school leaders in several categories. Her career record of 559 assists lasted for 19 seasons.
After college, Hughley played two seasons professionally in Sweden and Australia, but then returned home to Flint to be with her son and mother. It wasn’t long before she was back at Northern and winning state championships. But this time she was winning as the Vikings’ coach. Northern won back-to-back state titles in 1994 and 1995 under Hughley, who easily adapted her passion for playing to a sideline role when she became head coach in 1993. “It’s a different kind of excitement,” Hughley said. “You see them develop the things you’re asking them to do, you can get just as much joy out of that as you do playing.”
Hughley still coaches the Vikings, but she’s also the head coach of Mott College’s women’s team, a role she’s held the last four years. She makes it work due to early morning practices at Mott, and after-school practices at Northern, where she also works as a school liaison police officer. “It makes for long days, but I enjoy it,” said Hughley. “I really enjoy coaching. I’m not sure how much longer I can do both, but I made a commitment to the seniors at Northern now that I would coach at least until they graduated.”
Whether she’s involved with one coaching job or two, Hughley knows that her legacy as a local sports icon is secure. “Just to be considered for the Hall of Fame is an honor,” she said. “To actually get inducted into it, that’s beyond anything I could have expected.” Nonetheless, anything seems possible with Hughley involved in it.
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