Multi-talented PH senior Blake sets sights on cross country state finals
Oct. 18—PENDLETON — When his sophomore track and field season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pendleton Heights distance runner Andrew Blake needed a hobby, something to occupy his mind and his time when he wasn't completing workouts prescribed by his running coach.
Already interested in the creative arts — music, poetry and impressionism — Blake decided to learn the piano. And, with everything else shut down, there was only one way to do that.
"I started during COVID, and I'm self-taught," he said. "I started without sheet music, but I joined the jazz band my junior year, and that's when I had to learn to use sheet music. I also took an AP music theory class in my school, and I started composing. So I write my own music often, and I play jazz and improv."
Blake, who will run in the New Haven cross country semistate for the fourth straight year and is also his class president, has also taught himself to play the keyboard and is learning the guitar.
He sees a similarity between running — something he has done since his elementary school principal noticed the way he ran during recess and suggested he try cross country — and the music he has picked up very recently.
"The way I take music is you can find art in whatever you do," he said. "I've learned that every note I write has significance, putting certain notes in a chord makes a sound that everyone likes. I think there's beauty in the music I make, and there's a certain essence of that reflected in the running."
Long-time PH girls cross country coach Melissa Hagerman took on the boys job as well this season and enjoys having such an eclectic young man leading her team.
"He'll play songs on the bus, and I'll ask him, 'Are you just doing this for me?'" she said. "He's got a good personality. He's a fun kid."
Blake said there was some apprehension when he and his teammates learned of the coaching change after Alan Holden retired earlier this year. But that quickly dissipated as the results of the methods of his new coach began to take hold.
But his great fall season, which so far has included Hoosier Heritage Conference runner-up, a personal best 16:16 at Taylor University, All-Madison County and top-10 finishes at both sectional and regional, was in serious doubt before it ever got started.
During the HHC track and field meet in May, Blake felt a sharp pain in his leg and limped through the second lap of his leg of the 3,200-meter relay race. He tried to also run the 3,200-meter individual race later in the meet, but his coaches pulled him out as his limp became more extreme.
Two weeks later, the diagnosis was handed down and Blake had suffered a stable patella fracture to his kneecap.
It was a crack in the bone, not a stress fracture, and required two months of rest to heal. Even when he returned to running in July, it still was not right. Hagerman and her staff saw the flaws in the way he was running and overcompensating for the injury and worked on his form. Through the work done at the team's camp in mid-July and some physical therapy, he began to return to form.
But he still had doubts he would be able to run like he had run before.
"One of the guys (on the team) asked me how I was going to do this year, and I specifically remember telling him that I didn't know if I would make All-County this year," he said. "At that point, I was playing basketball, trying to run a regular game and I couldn't even do that. Everyone on our team would go run 4 miles regularly and just talk, and I couldn't run 10 meters without stopping."
At the team's season opener, the Avon Hokum Karem race, his questions about his own return to form were smashed when he saw times faster than he had run in years.
"Leading up to that, I had about 20 to 25 good miles of running this summer," Blake said. "Last year, my junior year, I had over 400 miles. The first mile (at Avon) was 5:05, and I hadn't run that fast since track. Then my next mile was 5:06, then 5:04 and that was a good way to know I was back."
He hopes to continue his running career next year at college. He is currently undecided but is looking at both Indiana Wesleyan and IUPUI and would like to study political science.
He is far more confident about his goals for Saturday in the New Haven semistate, being held this year on the IWU campus.
"Top 12," he said.
"He's kind of been under the radar, too, and we've had some good talks about where we see him at semistate," Hagerman said. "He has a ton of respect for the other (Madison) County runners."
Blake, along with fellow Arabian Ava Jarrell, Noah Price (Liberty Christian), Cameron Smith and Sophie Goodwin (Lapel) and Faith Norris (Daleville) is one of a handful of area runners who could realistically see their seasons conclude Oct. 29 in the state finals at LaVern Gibson Course in Terre Haute.
Hagerman is hopeful all six make it as the Madison County area has not seen a runner advance to the finals since Luke Combs of Lapel in 2019 and no Arabian runner since Milan Jones in 2018.
"I'd love for Madison County to be represented," she said. "It's been too long."
The girls will run first Saturday at 10:30 a.m. with the boys race to follow at approximately 11:15.
Contact Rob Hunt at rob.hunt@heraldbulletin.com or 765-640-4886.
