When John Blake came up the steps Friday night from the locker room to the field and saw his staff and players and friends and family and former players all wearing a shirt with “BLAKE 25” on the back of it, he needed a moment.
“I started crying,” Blake said. “It was pretty cool. That’s what I told them — the shirts were real cool, but I couldn’t hold back. It was special and I wasn’t expecting anything like that.”
Those shirts celebrated Blake’s final home game at St. Anne’s and 25 years as the head coach of the Saints’ football team.
The whole night celebrated those things, including a halftime ceremony with former and current players and school faculty members taking time to honor Blake, a coach who’d given so much to the program for the last quarter century.
There was even some poetic symmetry as Blake’s first win came during the school’s convocation night 25 years ago and STAB was holding its annual convocation again on Friday. All of Blake’s family was there including his wife Mary and his sons Hunter and Patrick, an assistant coach for the Saints. There was a raucous student section. Everything was perfectly in place.
Including Blake on the sideline, coaching the same way he has for 25 years — with edge, intensity and determination, pushing his players to find another gear and finish. And the Saints did finish, picking up their second win of the year, Blake’s 176th as the STAB head coach, with a 23-12 win over Catholic. That win even opened the door for another particularly Blake-centric tradition, the traditional chant of “White Pumpkin Hell” after wins in October.
“It was senior night, it was also Coach Blake’s last game on this field, celebrating a 25 year career, it’s pretty meaningful,” said STAB senior Liam Mullins. “We came out really hot and it got close after halftime, it took a lot to bring it back together, I can’t thank coach enough.”
STAB got there with a couple of blocked punts —Isayah Johnson had the first block and then recovered the second — and a poor punt leading to a 4-yard return by Chance Mallory that pushed the lead to 23-0 in the closing seconds of the first half. Even the game turning on special teams was appropriate as Blake has always brought a unique, creative and thoughtful approach to that phase of the game. For years the Saints’ kickoff unit would run up and mimic an onsides kick before settling into a normal kickoff formation.
“That was probably the worst punting game in the history of football,” Blake said, noting STAB had their own mishaps out of the punt formation. “I love that stuff, that’s part of what I do and to see so many of those plays that made a difference in the game, that’s really special to me too. We’ve done a lot of those crazy things over the years.”
The Saints’ offense also found some life in the win. STAB took advantage of a long layoff — they haven’t played a game since September 17th — to go back to their roots, and they used some classic Blake stuff like his off tackle and a long looping rollout play action pass off of it to move the ball effectively at times. The best sequence of that approach came in the second quarter when Nolan Bruton hit Mullins three times on a methodical drive for big chunk plays of 12, 21 and 25 yards each, setting up a Bruton one-yard touchdown plunge and a 7-0 lead.
“We just found a way to get it going and just made the connection happen,” Mullins said.
Mullins also came up with a huge sack late in the second quarter to force a turnover on downs and then Bruton hit Braden White for a 61-yard touchdown down the home sideline for a 16-0 lead.
STAB held on in the second half with a combination of solid defense that allowed just one huge play, a Seth Burnham catch and run for a touchdown and enough offense to keep the clock moving. Pharaoh Harris provided a lot of that ground game, hitting holes well and churning out some key first downs in the second half.
But the night belonged to Blake, who announced his retirement from football coaching a few weeks ago, though he’ll continue to serve STAB in his alumni relations role. With just a few road games left, including Blue Ridge next week, Blake is making sure he follows his own advice that he’s given to his players of the years — soak it in. The timing, the halftime presentation, the game — all of it.
“Twenty-five years later, to have it be convocation and to have it be my last one and to have (head of school) Autumn (Graves) speak was pretty cool,” Blake said. “And then to have the kind of game where we had to figure some things out, and our team grew tonight. They came out and they played hard and that was all I asked them to do today.”
That’s all he’s asked players to do for 25 years and they’ve delivered. Of course the last one at STAB’s home field wouldn’t be any different.
