Prize Recruit — Adaejah Hodge

THERE ARE VERY FEW meets in the world more competitive in the sprints than the SEC Championships. It took 22.75 to make the final of the women’s 200 at this year’s meet, only slightly slower than the 22.71 needed to make the cut at the NCAA Championships.

But that level of competition shouldn’t be too daunting for Adaejah Hodge. The 18-year-old Georgia prize recruit has already made it to the semis at both the ’23 World Championships and this past summer’s Olympic Games, representing her native British Virgin Islands.

“Those experiences are going to benefit her because she’ll know what pressure is,” says Caryl Smith Gilbert, the Bulldogs’ director of men’s and women’s track & field. “The SEC is brutal. But I think she’ll handle it better than most freshmen because she’s already been in those high-pressure situations.”

Hodge, who moved to Georgia from the BVI when she was about 9, emerged as one of the top prep sprinters as a junior, her first year running for Montverde Academy in Florida. She set the High School Indoor 200 record (22.33) to win the New Balance Indoor Meet in March ’23. That outdoor season she ran 11.11 for the 100 and a wind-aided 22.31 in the 200 before winning the New Balance Outdoor title over half a lap. In Budapest she held her own at Worlds, advancing out of the heats and finishing 7th in her semi.

A stress fracture in her right foot this spring disrupted her senior year momentum, but after 6 weeks of recovery she rallied to place 3rd at New Balance in both the 100 and 200 and clock season’s bests — and HS-list-leading times — of 11.19 and 22.66. She qualified for the Olympics and advanced to the 200 semis in Paris out of the repechage round.

“From Day 1 I knew I had to take it one race at a time and just focus on my lane,” Hodge says of her experience at Stade de France. “I knew going in that most of the competition had better PRs than me, but I knew I couldn’t focus on that because I would lose myself in the race.”

Later in August she capped her season by taking 200 gold and 100 silver at the World U20 Championships in Peru.

Hodge was already an accomplished sprinter in her early years at Alexander High in Douglasville, Georgia, with bests of 11.29, 23.25 and 53.26, but she credits her move to Montverde with her breakthrough. “My…