Stephen M. “Sam” Hood was born in Painesville, Ohio, and educated in Cabell County public schools. He graduated from Kentucky Military Institute and Marshall University and served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.
Sam owned and managed Huntington Piping Inc. from 1984 until selling the business in 2004, at which time he and his sons founded a real estate development business in Lexington, Kentucky.
Sam was among the founders of YMCA youth soccer in the early 1970s and co-founded high school soccer in West Virginia in 1978. He coached St. Joe High School to state soccer championships in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1988. He was twice named state high school soccer coach of the year, and was inducted into the Halls of Fame of the West Virginia High School Soccer Association, the West Virginia High School Soccer Coaches Association and the West Virginia Soccer Association.
Sam is considered by many to be the Father of Marshall Soccer, having founded and coached the program in the early 1980s. He built Marshall’s first soccer-exclusive on-campus facility, Sam Hood Field, in 1996.
Sam is a Civil War history enthusiast and served as president of the Board of Directors of Memorial Hall Museum in New Orleans. He has written three books, including “John Bell Hood: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of a Confederate General,” winner of the 2013 Albert E. Castel Book of the Year Award and the 2014 Walt Whitman Book of the Year Award. His latest book, “Patriots Twice: Former Confederates and the Building of America after the Civil War,” was a 2020 Amazon bestseller. Sam is currently writing “We Are Marshall Soccer: An Illustrated History of the Marshall University Men’s Soccer Program.”
He was presented the Outstanding Service Award by the Huntington YMCA in 1984 and 1990, and received an honorary diploma from St. Joe High School in 1985. He was inducted into the St. Joseph Alumni Hall of Fame in 2000.
