Madison’s Multisport Athlete Tells More

Story by: Derek Crawford

Jaxson Hodges is more than the average student at Madison. While many students in Madison participate in either music or sports, only a handful will do both and more.

Hodges is currently a junior at Madison High School who has started on both the varsity baseball team and the varsity football team. He is also a leading member in the Madison speech and debate team, and an elite singer in Madison Bobcats prestigious choir Bel Cantos. This might seem like a busy schedule to most people for their high school career, but he said he has been able to maintain all of his classes above an A grade.

Baseball and football have grown to become a promising thing for him in this time in his life. He began playing football ever when he was 11, and has made a bond with the Bobcats future quarterback ­­Devan Berry. This year during the football season Hodges didn’t have many touches, but hopefully that will change next year with Berry.

“In our freshman season we had 18 touchdown passes between me and him,” said Hodges. Baseball is another one of his loves. He has played competitive baseball since 2008.

Hodges has many championships under his belt. He started playing for Art Morales a little after 2008 and has played for him ever since.

“We got a new head coach this season and he’s actually a childhood coach that me and a lot of other buddies have had throughout the years, and so I think that’ll help increase not only our chemistry but our game,” said Hodges who is extremely excited to start playing some baseball in the fall.

“Jaxson is just one of those people that can help really tie a team together and make it a great team,” said Morales.

Speech and debate are another thing to add to his list of talents. “I do speech and debate,” said Hodges. “They are both very important to me and I enjoy doing them both alongside my sports.”

He has taken more of a leadership role due to this being his second year on the team. He has helped many of the new members with all that they need so they can grow in confidence.

Hodges has done very well in competitions winning the Madison Invitational Debate, and placing in other tournaments in speech. With all of this that he is doing throughout the school year, he has decided to “work harder to become bigger, stronger and faster to help me in both football and baseball” to ensure a varsity spot in all the activities he does.