Western Albemarle High School senior Hailey Hodson will be taking the road less-traveled when she enrolls at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland this fall. She was recruited by the USNA in part for her blazing speed and versatility as a cross country and track athlete, skills that have helped propel Western’s teams to continued statewide dominance during her tenure.

“I run anything from the 4×400 meter relay to the mile, so basically the middle-distance races,” said Hodson. “My favorites are the 800-meter and the 4×800-meter relay,” she said. Those roughly half-mile races (twice around the outdoor track) are where she particularly excels. “Since my freshman year, our 4×800 relay team has won the state meet three times and come in second once.” She downplays her individual performances, but in March Hodson competed in the Adidas Indoor Nationals in Virginia Beach and won the 800-meter National Elite race.

Hodson’s longtime coach is WAHS’s Cherie Witt, for whom she’s been running since she was six years old. “She was my P.E. teacher when I moved here in first grade, and the school had a club called Bee on the Run,” said Hodson. “So, I ran for her from about first grade to fifth grade, and then in middle school, her husband Chuck Witt did the Henley program so I ran for him from sixth to eighth grade, then I was back at Western with [Cherie].”

Hodson said Coach Witt’s experience is valuable to the team. “She’s seen so many girls run that she really knows the ins and outs of what’s going on. She can see what you’re doing and help you fix it. She’s very good at the technical information side of it and just trying to help us all do everything we can to improve.” Western’s girls indoor track team won the state championship this year for the second year in a row—the sixth crown they’ve captured in the last eight years—and the girls cross country team also won the state title in November.

Coach Witt knew Hodson was special from the start. “It was like someone had dropped a 40-year-old in my [first grade] class,” said Witt. “Hailey was just very wise beyond her years from a very young age. When she showed up as an eighth grader [on Western’s JV team], I put her in charge of things right away, because she loves to be in charge.” Witt said Hodson will excel at the Naval Academy because she’s a natural leader who appreciates structure and is willing to work hard.

“She sets a really high standard for her teammates—she’ll put it all out there, and she expects them to do their best as well,” said Witt. “She gets out on the track, jumping up and down, beating the baton on her leg, and she puts herself in a position to be competitive. To get into the Naval Academy, you have to be outstanding at everything and mentally tough, and Hailey is not afraid of a challenge, she does not back down—she’s actually fired up by it.”

While many of the USNA’s brigade of midshipmen come from families with immediate military ties, Hodson’s family owns and runs Veritas Vineyards and Winery. “I’m actually the first recent person in my family to be going into the military,” she said, “which is, I think, really cool. My great-grandfather was in World War II and I have an uncle who was in the British Army, but that’s all.” She had always been aware of the military academies as an option, but it was a chance encounter in Charlottesville that brought the USNA into sharp focus for her.

“After the regional indoor track meet during my sophomore year, my family went to Torchy’s Tacos and the entire Navy track team was there, passing through after a meet they had just had,” said Hodson. “I ended up talking to the coach for a little bit and I absolutely loved her. So, I started researching [the USNA] on my own and I reached out to her by email, and then the summer before my junior year I went up for the first time to Annapolis and I loved it.” She observed the challenges that Academy plebes (first-year students) face, as well as the energy and bonding of the squads and companies of students, and was intrigued.

“This year in August, I went on an official visit for track where I stayed in Bancroft Hall [where all 4,000 midshipmen reside] with some of the runners,” said Hodson. “It was the best weekend you could have picked to visit, because they had a cross-country meet and then a football game, so I got to be in the student section for the football game, which was so much fun. I knew that Navy was where I wanted to go. Everyone was so welcoming and the students were amazing. They were the type of people I could see myself with, that I wanted to be with—people that will drive me to keep doing more and more.”

Admission to the U.S. Service Academies is highly selective. Beyond academic achievement and leadership qualities, applicants are evaluated for characteristics such as dedication, a desire to serve others, an ability to accept discipline, a sense of duty and morality, and the enjoyment of challenge. Applicants must also be physically fit in tests of strength and endurance, and they must (in most cases) be nominated by a member of Congress or the U.S. President or Vice President, who vouches for their character.

“I applied to the three representatives from my district in Virginia—Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner and Representative Bob Good—and Representative Good was the first to respond,” said Hodson. Each member of Congress is given a limited number of slots for which they may make nominations, and they are allowed only five appointees to each Academy over a four-year period, so they often coordinate their available slots with each other. “It was interesting—when I went to the lunch for the students who had been nominated to the Academies in Rep. Good’s district, I was the only girl.” (For context, this year’s USNA Plebe class is 31% female.)

Has Hodson’s decision unnerved her parents? “I don’t think they’re super nervous, because we’ve kind of figured out what we’re getting into,” she said. “We’ve established that this is the right path for who I am and what I’m doing. They basically said, ‘if this is what you want to do, then go do it,’ which is really great. I can’t thank them enough for all their support and everything because it’s really been a lot with the application process and all.” Hodson hopes to visit her grandparents in Florida and maybe go to Smith Mountain Lake for a vacation before she has to report to the USNA in late June for a grueling seven weeks of physical and mental training called Plebe Summer.

By the end of their four years at the academy, midshipmen will have selected the service they’ll pursue as an officer after graduation. Summer trainings let them to experience and further prepare for each of the options. The service options range widely—aviation, surface warfare (ships), submarines, Marine infantry—and typically require a time commitment of five or more years after graduation during which the young officers will be scattered across the globe training in their specialty and commanding enlisted soldiers.

“Aviation is obviously very interesting,” said Hodson, “though right now, after the release of Top Gun, there’s a whole surge of people wanting to go into aviation. For my major, there are a few smaller programs like foreign affairs and so I’m looking into political science because in our government class at Western we do Model Congress, which made me realize I’m pretty interested in public policy and those kinds of fields. So having some military experience and understanding of those things and then going into public office could be a path. My main plan is that I have some ideas of what I want to do, but then really just taking in everything when I get there and figuring it out from there.”

Best of luck, Hailey!