How Tee Hodge mentored Maryville's Noah Vaughn to Power 5 commitment
Noah Vaughn wasn't used to sitting on the sidelines during football games. He grew up as the star of his youth and middle school teams, but as a freshman at Maryville, he wasn't on the same level as the state championship-winning seniors.
Vaughn's longtime friend Tee Hodge was a senior when Vaughn was a freshman, and Hodge took the younger running back under his wing. Hodge was then a Tennessee football commitment and led the Rebels to Class 6A state titles in 2017 and 2019.
He has since transferred to Indiana State.
"We'd come out here and work out and he'd tell me, 'You've got to be that dude here in a couple of years.' Now I'm in the spot where I'm the dude, and a lot of thanks goes to him for being a motivator," Vaughn said. "He held me to a higher standard, and I owe a lot of things to him for crafting me as a player."
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Vaughn, a three-star running back and Virginia commitment, is No. 8 on the Knox News Elite 8, a collection of the newspaper's top college football recruits for the Class of 2023. Selections were made after getting the opinions of recruiting writers and observations on the field.
Vaughn rushing for 1,611 yards and 22 touchdowns as a junior and is the No. 37 prospect in the state according to the 247Sports Composite. He had eight offers before picking the Cavaliers.
Vaughn impresses Tee early
Hodge first met Vaughn at a little league football game between the Maryville and Alcoa development teams. Vaughn was about 7 years old, but Hodge remembers immediately noticing his speed and physicality.
"I noticed he had scored like three touchdowns, and I was like man, who is this kid? Like this kid is special," Hodge said. "I walk up to him after the game, and I was like 11 years old at the time so I'm not thinking he even knows who I am, and as soon as he turns around, his eyes lit up. He was like a kid in a candy store and goes, 'Man, you're Tee Hodge!'
"I really got to watch him grow up through middle school and high school, and it's just crazy. He's almost been like a little brother. "
While Vaughn was disappointed that he played very little his freshman year, he said it was one of the biggest learning experiences of his football career. Much of that learning came from watching and working alongside Hodge.
"He knew I had the skill to do it, but he prepared me for the mental aspect of going out there," Vaughn said. "When I messed up — like if I fumbled the ball and the other team jumped on it — he would take me over to the sideline and tell me, 'You've got to shake that off and have short term memory.' If you harp on those things, you're not going to forget them and you're not going to get better for next time."
Vaughn has always been undersized — he is currently 5-9, 190 pounds — so even as a sophomore, he remained a role player for Maryville. He took nearly all of his reps at wide receiver and had to wait until the 2021 season to get a shot starting at running back.
As a junior, Vaughn didn't waste a second of his opportunity.
"I realized time was running out. I needed to get recruited, so I was like, I gotta go earn it," Vaughn said. "I knew I had to do something my junior year to go earn that scholarship, and that's why I took it so seriously. I knew I had it in me."
Hodge, who attended the Rebels' games against Powell and Alcoa last season, said he wasn't surprised at all by Vaughn's immediate success or by the attention he received from FBS coaches. Hodge expects Vaughn's skillset will give him a smooth transition into the Cavaliers' lineup.
"I think the sky's the limit for him seeing how he grew from his freshman year to now, with the resources he'll have and stuff like that (at Virginia)," Hodge said. "He's an incredible athlete. He's one of those guys where it's just natural for him."
Contact Emily Adams at eaadams@gannett.com or on Twitter @eaadams6.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Virginia football commit Noah Vaughn mentored by former Tennessee RB
