Highland middle schooler punches ticket to state competition with first place finish

Published 1:00 am Saturday, November 5, 2022

If you watch a cross country event that Highland Baptist is participating in, there’s a good chance that you’ll see Ella Blake leading the pack across the finish line.

Blake, an eighth-grader at Highland Baptist, has racked up three consecutive first-place finishes this year, her latest coming at the D5, Region 2 meet on Thursday.

Email newsletter signup

With a time of 20:28.10, Blake crossed the line nearly 30 seconds before anyone else.

Head coach Toby Blissett had nothing but positive words to say about his young athlete after her win on Thursday.

“You can’t ask for a better or more coachable athlete,” Blissett said. “Anything that I ask her to do, she does. I’ll get texts from her from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. asking about nutrition and what she should be doing for exercise or rest. She’s an all-around, complete athlete.”

Blake has set herself an impressive goal for the season, one that she looks to be closer to achieving with every event.

“This season, I’m focused on getting under 20 (minutes). I want to keep getting faster every meet.”

Blake, who has been competing on the varsity cross country team for two years, said that the win makes her proud of the hard work she put in during the summer.

“It feels good,” she said of the first-place finish. “I’m proud of myself because I worked hard all summer.”

Blissett said the summer workouts weren’t really that hard, but they did require a lot of dedication from the athletes.

“It may have been intense for them, but that’s just because they were out of shape,” Blissett said. “It’s just basic summer conditioning. We committed ourselves to doing base conditioning this year, which is long, slow miles getting their cardiovascular system built up. That’s something that we haven’t focused on enough in the past and it’s clearly made a difference for her this year.”

Blake said she averages about 20 to 25 miles of running each week, and also competes on the Highland track team, making it to the state meet last year in the one-mile run.

“I like the one-mile the most,” Blake said when asked which track event she prefers. “I placed sixth at state. I also run the two-mile, but I don’t like it as much as the one mile. The one-mile is a shorter distance. I don’t like running eight laps around the track, it gets boring. I prefer cross country, in track you’re running around the same thing the whole time, in cross country you can see different things. It has more scenery.”

Being a dual-sport athlete keeps Blake in running shape all year long, and it has paid off for her with a new school record. Previously, the girls 3-mile record time was 20:38, which was set in 2017 by Dusti Abshire, but Blake’s 20:27 time at the Iberia Parish championship meet meant that the middle schooler has already put her name in the HBCS record books

Blissett said that the new training program has his athletes, including Blake, performing their best at the right time in the season.

“Something that we’ve struggled with in the past is our athletes peaking at the right time,” he explained. “Because we weren’t building our base over the summer, they were running their best times earlier in the season when we started doing speed work. They’ve been patient with the process of not seeing the results early on and knowing that it would pay off for them. She’s shown that every week. She’s gotten better and better every week and she’s peaking at the right time.”

Blake said she enjoys training with her teammates, even some of Highland’s top boys team performers like freshman Tyler Blissett and senior Neil Mason. When asked whether running as a team motivates her to perform better, she jokingly said “yeah, but I run faster than some of them.”

“I’d say it’s Tyler, Neil, then me.”

That might seem a bit cocky, but Blissett said she has what it takes to back it up.

“The sky’s the limit for her if she stays as focused as she is now. Girls are always tricky when they hit maturity and their bodies start to change. You never know what to expect. If she stays focused, there’s no limits to what she can do. She could be a state champion one day.”

Blake has already accomplished a lot in the world of cross country. In addition to her Parish, District and Regional championships in 2022, Blake also was named All-parish in 2022 and All-District in 2022 and 2021. Blake is currently the No. 2 ranked athlete in Division V.

Blake will compete in the State meet on Nov. 14.