Maplewood football QB Bobo Hodges may be undersized but he's playing for a region title

Bobo Hodges has been considered undersized and underrated throughout his high school football career.

Entering Maplewood's regular-season finale, Hodges has a chance to quiet those critics when the Panthers host Tullahoma on Friday for the Region 4-4A championship.

“Being underrated, being counted out, being too small, being just too little to play,” said Hodges, who is now 6-feet, 185 pounds. “I’m trying to prove a point this year. Anybody who passed up on me, I’m trying to show them all.”

Maplewood (8-1, 4-0) hasn't won a region championship since the Panthers won three straight from 2009-11.

Hodges has been the spark plug for the Panthers' offense. He is 119-of-176 passing for 2,148 yards with 31 touchdowns and just three interceptions. He's one of five Nashville area quarterbacks to have surpassed 2,000 yards for the season. 

Hodges, whose given name is Timotheus but has gone by Bobo as long as he can remember, comes from an athletic family. Bo is a two-time Class AA Mr. Basketball winner and plays at East Tennessee State. His father, Bo Hodges Sr., grew up in Nashville and played alongside Maplewood football coach Arcentae Broome at Stratford.

Bobo Hodges is a two-sport athlete. He was the school's point guard his sophomore season when it won the Class AA state championship alongside his brother.

Hodges channeled his athleticism early in his high school career. He took over as the starting quarterback by Week 5 of his freshman season and has started every year in basketball at point guard.

As a quarterback and point guard, Hodges welcomes the pressure of running an offense and thrives at high speed. His style at both positions is similar with a hard-nosed mentality, and he’s not afraid to get physical.

Maplewood seldom runs a hurry-up offense on the football field, but it also rarely huddles, which allowed Hodges to keep things moving quickly. Hodges stands out as a dual-threat quarterback especially as he has learned to be more technically proficient in finding receivers in broken-down plays.

“He has a pass-first attitude, but he can get you out of a jam, and he can use his legs to pick up first downs,” Broome said. “His skill set is one that is a quarterback-first mentality but has a running back feel to it at times. He can make the same plays that most of our guys that play running back or receiver make.”

Broome had always considered the gold standard for quarterbacks at Maplewood to be Ladarrious Wimberly, who passed for 2,226 yards at a 62.8 percent completion rate with 17 touchdowns in 2013. But Hodges already surpassed that with 2,412 yards last season and is on pace to shatter that mark at a career-best 67.6 percent completion rate.

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