CORPUS CHRISTI — A 22-year-old Flour Bluff native will come out on Jeopardy on October 20.
“I must have been five or six at the time,” Hodges said. “My sister we would watch it together.”
From a young age, Hodges loved Jeopardy.
“It was always a dream of mine,” Hodges said.
His family, full of educators, always encouraged his passion for learning
“It was kind of shocking when he was reading at three,” his mom, Annette Hodges said. “We were like 'oh wow.'”
Hodges started applying for Teen Jeopardy while attending Flour Bluff High School. He graduated a National Merit Scholar and decided to try again.
“Ever since I turned 18 I started doing it once a year,” Hodges said.
He even enlisted help from one of his teachers.
“I sent him a couple of years of study questions like thousands of questions and I know he probably went through all of them,” Flour Bluff High School science teacher, Beth Huckabee, said.
Finally in 2021 after a series of challenging tests and interviews, he became one of the three.
“I had no hope of getting in at all. Over 60,000 people take the test and only three people an episode make it,” Hodges said.
He stepped onto the Jeopardy stage in September.
“It’s literally a once in a lifetime experience you know, you can never do it again and I’m really glad that I was able to do that. I had a lot of fun,” Hodges said.
“We’re so proud of him and we are just really happy,” his mom said.
“Hey watch party let’s take off work and we were like ‘neh we can’t do that’ but we were tempted to take off just to watch him,” said Mary Keyes, Flour Bluff High School math teacher.
Hodges went to school on a full ride to the University of Houston for hotel management and earned his master’s in 2021. He is engaged and working for a hotel chain giant in Washington D.C.
“He got a master’s degree at age 22,” his dad, John Hodges, said. “He’s Just a smart kid.”
Hodges episode of Jeopardy airs on his birthday, on Wednesday October 20th on KRIS 6 at 11:30 a.m. and on KZTV at 3:30 p.m.
