Something is definitely different about Les Hodge these days.
Let’s see. At age 69, he’s still in his seat at every basketball game that his hometown Batavia High School team plays.
Like most every winter Friday night in memory, Hodge, a local reporter, was on hand Friday as the Bulldogs played host to Sycamore, chatting amicably with coaches, players and fellow fans who regularly fill the school gym to capacity.
But wait. For four quarters Hodge rarely moved his head away from the floor. Never did he glance at a pencil and paper in front of him to record the last point, rebound and missed free throw.
That’s it: no more head-bobbing.
“We as reporters are always head-bobbers, looking at the game and then down at the pad to take notes,” Hodge said. “But this time I didn’t bob heads. I just sat there. It felt kind of good.”
After 41 years of covering Fox Valley sports for a variety of local newspapers and radio stations, Hodge called it a career last month. His arthritic knees and ankles finally told him it was time for him to move on just as it had been for the thousands of athletes he has chronicled through the decades.
“Climbing those bleachers, sometimes when I sat through two games I couldn’t get out of the chair,” he said. “I still intend to go to the games, but at least now I intend to get up and walk around once in a while.”
In 1952, Hodge volunteered to cover a game for a local paper. He thought it would be a great chance to earn a few bucks and have some fun at the same time. He had no idea then that he wouldn’t put the pencil down until he had become a sports legend in a town that has seen dozens of them, from Raymond McDermott and Walter Trantow, who led Batavia to a state basketball championship in 1912, to Corey Williams and LaMarr Justice, who took the Bulldogs back to state nearly 80 years later.
“Sure, I thought sportswriting was just a temporary thing. Then I got involved in it and it was such a thrill to meet a lot of greats in not only high school sports, but also college and pro,” he said. “I always liked telling their stories.”
And there have been so many stories to tell in Batavia and nearby Geneva, St. Charles, Kaneland and Aurora, teams and individuals who were also sometimes penned by Hodge.
Hodge can count among his personal friends former Fox Valley athletes Dan Issel, who went on to basketball stardom at both the collegiate and professional levels, and Ken Anderson, who quarterbacked the Cincinnati Bengals to a Super Bowl. Both, Hodge said, were pretty good Little League baseball players.
They’ve sent notes telling Hodge he’s too young to quit, as have many others whose formal athletic careers ended with high school graduation.
During his long career, Hodge has been enshrined in the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame. He has interviewed world-class athletes such as Cub Hall of Famer Billy Williams and Olympic marathon champion Joan Benoit Samuelson.
He has had the thrill of stepping on the Assembly Hall floor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign when Batavia qualified for the state basketball tournament finals in 1991, its first such trip in more than 70 years.
But he also has enjoyed his share of the unusual, such as the time he covered the Fox Valley Archery Club’s annual shootout along the Fox River.
“I don’t remember his name, but there was a fellow there who was a trick-shot artist. He told me to put my hat out and he’d show me how close he could get. He took the arrow out, put it through the bill of my cap and nailed it to the wall behind me.
“That’s one of the few times I ever thought, `Why am I doing this?’ “
Throughout the years, Melba Hodge always understood why Les was chronically late for dinner. She never begrudged a single one of the estimated 10,000 to 12,000 sporting events that kept her husband out of the house and sometimes away from their four children.
In fact, she went along for several thousand of those games and matches. But now, she says, it’s a pleasant change to leave the gym right after the game instead of waiting in the hall while Les finishes one more interview with a coach or a player.
“It’s not so bad having him around,” she said. “I don’t have to think about him running over to the office to check on the story. Now he can just come home and baby-sit with the (11) grandkids.”
Even though both admit to some withdrawal pains, the Hodges seem to be adjusting quickly to a life without the ink stains. Still, they wouldn’t have done it any other way.
“You know, it’s been a great life,” Les Hodge said. “Really, after the years you put into it, you can look back and say to yourself, `Well, it was something that I could give back to my community.’ Covering sports has kept me young, it’s always given me a lot of motivation.”
The last of more than 2,000 columns Les Hodge wrote appeared in the Kane County Chronicle on Christmas Eve.
“The one thing I always attempted to bring to the forefront was that the large majority of the youth I met and watched play the games were all good people,” Hodge wrote. “Today, as adults I see the contributions they have returned to their community and society in many professions.
“I accomplished the goal I set for myself to accomplish long ago when I had my first word put in print. All I wanted to do was tell the story to you the reader and others who didn’t get to see youngsters play their games.”
