Senior Batavia receiver Marcus Hughbanks enters the 2025 season as one of the top receivers in Ohio. The wideout is committed to playing college football at Ohio University.
Photo by Sun Sports Reporter Jake Dowling
Bulldog wideout enters senior year as one of best in Ohio
Senior Batavia receiver Marcus Hughbanks enters the 2025 season as one of the top receivers in Ohio. The wideout is committed to playing college football at Ohio University.
Photo by Sun Sports Reporter Jake Dowling
Senior Batavia receiver Marcus Hughbanks is looking to build off his breakout junior season when he caught 1,308 yards and 19 touchdowns for the Bulldogs.
Photo by Sun Sports Reporter Jake Dowling
BATAVIA — How good was Marcus Hughbanks’ junior season?
Only two National Football League wideouts topped Hughbanks’ electrifying 1,308 receiving yards — Justin Jefferson and Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase — and no one in the league had more touchdown grabs.
Pretty good company for a high schooler. What does the speedy Batavia receiver — he’s also an all-American track hurdler and an Ohio High School Athletic Association state qualifier — have in store for an encore senior year?
The 2025 football season is highly anticipated for the American Division team from the Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference. Last season, the team ended a 12-year playoff drought, excluding the 2020 COVID-19 season, finishing with an 8-3 record and a 4-1 record in the American Division.
At the forefront of Batavia’s fourth playoff season in the last quarter of a century was the 6-foot-3 Hughbanks, who hauled in a career-best 67 passes for 1,308 yards — the seventh-most yards in Ohio — and 19 touchdowns.
Entering his senior season, which begins Aug. 22 at Madeira, Hughbanks has 127 receptions for 2,397 yards and 28 touchdowns in his high school career. The Bulldogs have improved alongside Hughbanks — from 94 yards receiving and one team win in his freshman season to 995 yards and three victories his sophomore year, and 1,308 yards during Batavia’s first playoff campaign since 2012.
“Every year, we have gotten better, and it all starts with the offensive line. The offensive line has progressed, and we have a great quarterback,” Hughbanks said. “We’ve built that chemistry, and everyone is sticking together, and that’s helped us progress. Our numbers have gotten better, everything has gotten better — our team, the coaching, our school spirit. It is a big factor.”
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