Cody Bo Knows

Cody Bo Knows

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

First the knees bend, flexing tendons and stretching muscles. The quadriceps explode into action, pulsing along the femur as four muscles stretch in unison.

It’s the late 1990s and a dozen kids swarm the Douglas Primary School playground, a handful of youngsters with basketballs bigger than their heads and a set of baskets located a couple feet closer to the ground.

There’s one boy, shorter than the rest, and he keeps taking off from the pavement, basketball clutched in both hands, and soaring until his head nears the rim, then throwing the ball downward through the nylon net.

Blood pours down the femoral artery as the hamstrings contract on the back of the thigh, turning the lower leg inward as the hip rotates in unison with the knee.

It’s about 10 years later, and that boy, now a young man, is a sophomore playing varsity football for a team bound for the state title game. He runs a seam route across the middle – always a dangerous space for receivers – and leaps to make the catch. As he comes down with the ball, a defender grabs his leg, twisting it around as he swings through mid-air.

“Geez, how’d he not break his leg?” his coach asks. “I don’t know how he didn’t get hurt.”

The other kids call him “Shark Boy” because they believe he’s made entirely out of cartilage.

“He’s a very tough kid,” the coach says in awe. “He has great resiliency.”

Now the calf muscles are screaming with effort, the plantar flexors – the gastrocnemius, soleus and plantaris – work to stabilize the body, ensuring that when all these crouching muscles are unleashed, there is a united direction.

It’s 1993 and the boy is only 2. His legs work overtime as he tries to keep up with his older brother, Eric, as they gallop across the street to see an elk. The 2-year-old never sees the car coming. Later, the woman driving would admit to speeding when her bumper collided with him. He was tossed to the curb, bleeding and crying.

Miraculously, a few stitches later and the little boy was back up on his feet, ready for his next adventure.

Finally, all the clenched muscles release, as tendons and ligaments snap into place and the entire body pushes down onto the ground below, transferring energy and motion up through the legs into the body and suddenly the soles of the feet have left the ground. They propel upwards, leaving the safety of earth and soaring against gravity into the air. A jump.

He is the boy with the golden legs. The ones that can kick field goals, return punts, run through linebackers, clear hurdles, pop up from a crouch to throw out a would-be basestealer, lift above a crowded lane to grab an offensive rebound, or launch into an intruding tight end’s chest.

These are the legs of Cody Bohlander. At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about his lower extremities, which have already been operated on. But somehow, someway, those two poles of strapping muscle and bouncy tendons have propelled Cody to the state’s athletic elite.

“I don’t know whether to credit it to my mom or dad,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know which one can jump higher. I’m pretty sure it’s my mom.”

Jumper

Everyone knows Cody can jump. From his coaches, to his teammates, to the uneducated fan in row seven. But why does he jump so high? Football teammates Jake Vogel and Daniel Hancock both have higher verticals than Cody (who at 35 inches isn’t exactly shabby). So why is it that Cody elicits muffled bursts of amazement from the crowd?

“I don’t know,” football coach Jay Rhoades says, as he mulls the question. “I think a lot of it is the timing. He knows when the ball is at its highest point and is able to make those kinds of catches that make him look like he’s jumping higher than he is. But he’s a pretty good jumper.”

Basketball coach Ron Erickson is even more vague.

“I think a lot of it is heart,” he says. “He has a combination of somebody who can really leap and is naturally aggressive. You’re going to have a good rebounder when you can combine those two things.”

“I think I just time it right,” Cody says. “They’ll just jump to jump. I’ll time it right so I can get to the ball.”

From an early age, Cody was known for his jumping. Not only that, but he loved to jump.

“When you’re above everyone, and you’re the shortest guy, it’s an intense feeling,” he says. “I think I like that feeling more than scoring a basket.”

He used to get in trouble at school for breaking exit signs as he leapt to touch them on his way by. By the time he reached high school, he was a celebrated athlete in five sports. He had played as point guard of two undefeated middle school basketball teams, played quarterback and linebacker in football, even won a state championship in 2000 in wrestling (he was fourth at Rocky Mountain Regionals). He was a baseball player and a skilled hurdler and high jumper. And he was just entering high school.

By the time he was done with high school, especially on the gridiron, he would be one of the most celebrated athletes in Douglas lore.

Records galore

By the time the final seconds clicked off the clock at Bearcat Stadium to clinch Douglas’ 34-21 win over Buffalo for its first state football title in 30 years, Cody had already clinched almost every statistical accolade one person could accumulate.

At the top of the list was his 1,810 total yards, 200 more than any other 4A player. His 22 touchdowns were eight more times than anyone else found the end zone.

As a runner, he was second in the state with 990 yards and tops with 19 touchdowns. His 6.2 yards per carry also topped 4A.

As a receiver, he was fifth with 395 yards and three touchdowns. His punt return average of 12.1 yards was best in 4A and his kick return average put him third.

Along the way, he notched the longest run (84 yards) and catch (95 yards) in the state. To top it all off, he was second on the team with 130 defensive points from his safety position.

“He’s a playmaker. He has a knack for it,” Rhoades says. “That sums up Cody more than anything.”

Cody was a starter from the get-go, playing as a freshman as a punter and punt and kick returner. The last two games of his first season, he was inserted into the starting lineup in place of Blake Richendifer.

As a sophomore and junior he played safety and slot receiver, leading the team in receptions as a junior. But then his senior year, things changed.

Receiver to runner

“I really was planning on using him as the slot receiver and running the ball every once in a while out of that position,” Rhoades says about his plans entering last fall. “But when we went to camp, two of our tailbacks got hurt and we threw him in for a scrimmage. I knew it was going to be hard to get him out of that tailback spot.”

During the first two games of the season, Cody and Pierre Etchemendy split carries in the backfield. But after a tough  27-14 loss to Glenrock, Cody and Rhoades sat down to discuss the team’s direction at running back.

“I told him I wanted to put the team on my shoulders. I wanted to help the team out,” Cody says.

“When you have a kid who does that, a lot of coaches may feel threatened by that, but in my eyes, you have a kid come up and he says he wants to carry the load and basically put the team on his shoulders and carry them as far as he can.”

“It wasn’t really hard for me,” Cody says. “I knew that this was my last season. We needed help to get to the state championship. I felt like it wasn’t a big pressure on me, and it would help our team out to have a set running back.”

So the starting gig was Cody’s and he never looked back. He rushed for 154 yards in week four against Rawlins and there was no doubt the job was his.

Above the rim

In recent years, only three Bearcats have lettered four years in basketball: Chase Plumb, Blake Richendifer and Cody Bohlander. While Cody’s stats (he averaged 12 points and four rebounds per game as a senior All-State player) may not measure up to Plumb and Richendifer, his impact on Bearcat basketball can compete.

Cody joined the team as a freshman, late in the season, and played mostly as a defensive specialist.

“I remember watching him play in his first game for JV and thinking ‘That young man is going to be a great athlete,’” Erickson says. “He was doing some pretty impressive things athletically.”

By his sophomore year, Cody was starting, but still working as a utility man, playing tough defense and grabbing rebounds.

“Cody was really our blue-collar, heart-and-soul player,” Erickson says.

His junior year, he finally got his chance to showcase his skills offensively. His numbers stayed similar between his junior and senior seasons, although the team’s success greatly increased. Cody hit two free throws in the final two seconds to give the Bearcats third place in the state to cap his senior season.

“He’s very well respected by his peers and teammates,” Erickson says. “With me, with Cody, I think of a real competitor. That’s the key word that jumps into my mind.”

Oh, there’s more

We’re more than 1,500 words into his story and there hasn’t been a single mention of his baseball or track successes.

Cody has starred as catcher and third baseman – as well as cleanup hitter – for the Cats American Legion baseball team in the summers. While most of his fellow high school athletes are relaxing as life guards at the pool, Cody is sweating under a venerable anvil of equipment while squatting behind home plate.

He had a chance at winning state in the 110m hurdles last spring, but fell late in the race. He’s also excelled as a high jumper.

He even suggested at one point that, “If Douglas had a soccer team, I’d probably play on it.”

Too many sports

Back when he was wrestling, Cody would play five sports each year: football, basketball, wrestling, track and baseball. That’s probably why he’s decided to take a break from competitive athletics when he goes to college at the University of Wyoming.

“I’ve never really had a break,” he says. “A lot of other kids didn’t play baseball, but I went four or five sports every year. I didn’t get a break to just have fun.”

Cody hopes to become a pharmacist, an interest he’s had brewing since his first chemistry class.

“I like working with chemicals,” he says. “I like my science classes more than anything. When we were in chemistry, I liked doing all the labs and figuring out how things worked.”

Hopefully, the first thing he can figure out, in his quest to see how things work, is how it’s possible for a 5’ 10” unimposing athlete to soar through the skies, as if he’s a bird taking flight over treetops.

Someone has to know.