Champions' TriBUne Archive

By: Blake Blackmar
 
Champions' TriBUne is a special feature through Baylor Athletics that will give you the student-athlete's perspective and tell their story in their voice. Blake Blackmar is a fifth-year senior offensive lineman from Houston, Texas, who has made 36 consecutive starts going into the football team's Dec. 27 Texas Bowl versus Vanderbilt. He will graduate this Saturday with a double major in supply chain management and management information systems:

Most kids throw a football with their dad. I don't know if we even owned one. To this day, I still can't throw a good spiral.
 
My dad was an offensive lineman at the University of Texas, and we would go in the back yard and do all these linemen-centric drills, like tackling and coming off the ball and hitting this pad.
 
That actually started with us picking up a punching bag off the side of the road that someone was throwing out. It was all duct-taped up and weighed about 100 pounds. One day I was messing with it, and it fell on me. I wound up with a black eye for picture day at school. My mom was not very happy about that.
 
After that, we got two actual tackling dummies, and my dad and I would go out in the back yard and do all these drills after practice. I played in the Bob Morgan Football league in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when I was 6 years old. That's kind of where my dream of playing college football started, because I remember coming home from football practice and thinking it was the greatest thing on earth.
 
We moved back to Texas when I was in the second grade, and I had to play soccer that year because I was too heavy to play in the local football league. I was a pretty good goalie, but I knew that wasn't the sport for me.
 
The next year, I had to drive an hour from where I lived to play in a different league with the Southbelt Dolphins. The weight limit went all the way up to 160 pounds. I never really hit a huge growth spurt, I was just always really big. I was in the fourth grade, playing up with fifth- and sixth-graders.
 
I did that all the way through the sixth grade, and I loved it, because I was good and I was exposed to a lot of older and more mature kids. I used to make fun of all my friends back in my area, because I couldn't play with them and they thought their team was good. We would have blown them out of the water if we had ever played them, but we didn't.
 
The dream has always been to be a college lineman, but I played basketball, baseball and did all the sports through elementary school. Around the fifth or sixth grade, I started getting into AAU basketball in the Houston area and played for the Houston Hoops, which is a really good program that traveled to all the big tournaments in Texas.
 
My dad had pretty much always been my coach, but he didn't know anything about basketball. My friend's dad, William West, became the head coach of our AAU team while my dad helped out with our general athletics training. Coach West made me work out and play with kids that were much smaller and faster than me to increase my athleticism. I was constantly reminded that I could not rely on just being a big body to get me to the next level.
 
In eighth grade, I remember going to this big John Lucas basketball camp. The Harrison twins were there, Justise Winslow, Kelly Oubre, a bunch of the guys I had played against in the AAU circuit. At the end of the camp, John Lucas goes down the line and basically tells everyone what they need to work on and gives them a 10-second honest opinion of whether they have a shot to play the next level.
 
I'm standing next to this guy from Georgia that's my same height, about 6-4, but an absolute stud. John Lucas gets to me, and he's like, "Look at this guy, he's a Ferrari. Now, look at you, you're a dump truck. I don't know if basketball is necessarily your future sport. You might want to try football." I told him, "Don't worry, I've got you covered."
 
I get to high school, and I was the first kid in how many ever years to start as a freshman on varsity, and I just kind of steamrolled through high school. I ended up with 11 varsity letters for football, basketball and track. I was always driven to be a college athlete. That's what I had wanted to do since I was a kid. And that desire just got stronger and stronger as I got older.
 
My dad would really push me to do a lot of things. If I showed interest, he would say, "Here are some things you need to do if you want to be the best or give yourself the best opportunity." I didn't go to a ton of big trainers or anything, it was always just a lot of at-home stuff. I had to do a lot of extra workouts to help my overall athleticism. We had this light that was probably 9 or 9 ½ feet high, and I remember having to jump up and touch that light 100 times every night before I came in for dinner.


 
So, I was exposed to that kind of work ethic as a young kid, while everyone else was just chilling and going to practice and thinking that was enough.
 
My freshman year, I started having coaches from UT and Oklahoma coming by. I was getting recruited by Major Applewhite at the time. I called my dad immediately and told him I have a real shot at being a college athlete.
 
People thought I was just going to go to UT because of my dad. But, he made it real clear that he didn't want to influence me. He made his decision 30 years ago for his own reasons. Things are completely different now.
 
I really fell in love with Baylor. It was the best mix of football, academics and faith for me. It just really fit the bill, and this place started feeling like home.
 
When they started recruiting me as a sophomore, Baylor was barely on the radar. I didn't really think anything of it. And then I was like, "Well, let me just go check out a game." They were playing Kansas State, which was ranked No. 1 in the country, and really took it to them. It wasn't even a close game. I came back for Junior Day, and Baylor was my first offer. From then on, I was pretty sold on the university.
 
Going in that first year, I knew I was probably going to redshirt. There were a lot of other places where I could have gone and played sooner, but I really wanted to see how much of a better athlete I could become and see that transfer to the field.
 
It was hard at first, everybody has those little growing pains. You spend that whole first summer just learning how to lift correctly. It's all very light weight. You spend a lot of time running, and I wasn't the best at running. I remember the first job I had my freshman year was to spot LaQuan McGowan on pull-ups, so that was like a whole shoulder press workout by itself.
 
Playing on the scout team that year, I got to play against guys like Andrew Billings and Beau Blackshear. Even being on the scout team, winning a Big 12 championship, you felt like you were a part of it. And then, seeing how guys like Beau Blackshear, Spencer Drango, Troy Baker and Kyle Fuller led during off-season workouts and during practice was definitely an experience I wouldn't trade to maybe play in one or two games.
 


That redshirt freshman season, I just remember getting so excited before every game, being so nervous the night before the game. Even knowing that I might not get in until the second half, I would be so pumped up.
 
I got my first start at the end of that year, against Texas, and that was a huge, emotional game. Des Hilliard had hurt his hand, so I got my first career start. We barely lost at the end, with no quarterbacks, and then went into the Russell Athletic Bowl and rushed for all those yards.
 
We went into that offseason feeling like a lot of good things were happening, but then the next year was when everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. It was like being stuck in quicksand, and the harder you try to get out, the deeper you sink.
 
My way of dealing with anything that's hard is to just kind of put my head down and keep working hard because things will get better. What else are you going to do? You can't do anything about it now. So, that's what me and a lot of the other guys did. We had each other's back, we just kept showing up to work every day, and eventually things got better.
 
We talked a lot this year about feeling like we're right there, just some things haven't gone our way, or we shot ourselves in the foot. To finally push it over the edge, and beat Texas Tech and get to a bowl game, that was so special. It showed that we're going in the right direction and we're committed to making this the best football program it can be and make Baylor the best place it can be and how good things are happening here. It was just a great feeling to hug everyone that had been there from your freshman year all the way till now and been through so much.
 
One thing my dad used to say that's really stuck with me is you don't have to be the best at your sport, but there is no excuse for being stupid. You might have to work harder at it, but that's something you can control. So, I always took school very seriously.
 
Everyone on my dad's side is an engineer, and everyone on my mom's side is a doctor. So, I just knew I didn't want to do either of those. I was in some pre-business classes, and I heard someone talking about supply chain management and how it's just getting stuff from Point A to Point B. I figured, I can do that. And that's why I picked up my second degree in management information systems, just to be better in the realm of supply chain.
 
After being here for five years and every summer, and taking classes all the time, now I'm going to have two degrees and a shot at the NFL. And then after that, I'm going to have to find a real job.
 
I know I'll be able to handle whatever is thrown at me from the mental side of things. The coaches will tell you: if you come out of this program and you feel like you don't have the tools to succeed in the business world or in the NFL, then it's on you, because you weren't paying attention.
 
I'm just ready to win this bowl game, and then a lot of decisions are going to have to be made very quickly. But, I'm ready to see what's next.



Previous Champions' TriBUne Features
Volleyball - Braya Hunt (Nov. 29, 2018)
Soccer - Jackie Crowther (Nov. 16, 2018)
Cross Country - Alison Andrews-Paul (Nov. 8, 2018)
Football- Ira Lewis (Nov. 6, 2018)