D3football.com Podcast 407 Extra: David Blake, Bethany (W.Va.) [40:15-44:17]

So right behind me, yeah, there's a skull and crossbones flag for those who are listening. And, you know, I always ask recruits when they come in and it was a big part to ask our players what it meant to them, you know, and really we bring together the cast of the guys, the forgotten, the left behind and the, the never was. But, but more importantly, I always tell the story of, you know, I'm a Navy guy and, you know, one of the things is you never give up the ship. But beyond that, you know, because I always talk about everything we do as a point of purpose and everything we do as an academic piece to it. And so here's, here's going to be your piece in US military history, currently on naval history in World War II. Okay. So during World War II, there was a man by the name of Ensign Jack Ernie. Jack Ernie was engaged in a dog fight with a couple of Japanese fighter jets. And so in the, within the scope of these fighter jets, they, they put a couple rounds into Jack Ernie's wings. And so Jack Ernie radio's back to the carrier and says, hey, you know, I'm taking rounds. I won't be able to make it back. And they said, how much fuel do you got? So he has enough fuel to get back to the carrier. But Jack Ernie knows if he returns and goes back to the carrier, the Japanese fighters, well, he'll, he'll then give up the location of the carrier to the Japanese. Yeah. And so instead of doing that, he stayed engaged in the dog fight. And when his final call sign was to take my skull and bones, remember me at the Jolly Rodgers. Yeah. That fighter squadron is VFA 103. That's the squadron my brother is in. And so to this day, Jack, after the war, they won't recover Jack Ernie's skull and crossbones. And now at VFA 103, they're in a little shadow box. And so when those guys go on, I don't know if they still do it now, but when my brother's in the squadron, when they go to like Key West or El Centro or Top Gun or any of these other things for deployment workups, they would take Jack Ernie's skull and crossbones with them. Wow. And the point to all that is, is it never give up, no matter what you're going through, never give up. And so we've talked about that as our style of play. We've also talked about as mental health aspect to it as well. Okay. Where no matter what you're going through, you're going to go through different phases of college, you know, whether you're living a little bit further away from home. And at the end of the day, you're not going back to mom and dad's place or grandma, grandpa, your guardian, whoever raised you, you're not going back to that comfortable bedroom that you know. And it's your little, you know, special little place where you're not going back to the dorms, the frat house, the apartments or everything else. And, you know, there's several other pieces of mental health that we talk about, the academic piece and, you know, eligibility or keeping your grades up for LSAT, MCAT, you know, GMAT, whatever it is. And all those academic rigors, and, you know, I talked to him about, you know, as you get older, your parents get older, as your parents get older, your grandparents get older. And that was a freshman in college, my grandfather passed away, it was a senior college one of my grandmothers passed away. And so by talking about this piece and being open and honest with it, we see, we say see something, say something. And because as a football player and as a coach, we're always pulling this pedestal to be the ultimate badass. Yeah. But I remind our guys that we're still human as well. And so no matter, I, so I told our guys, they said, even me as a head coach, I'm a high energy guy. You guys know me, you know, run around violent intentions of practice. And if you ever see me at practice and I'm just slow somber, call me out, you know what I mean? If you don't want to say it to me, have one of the coaches like, hey, coach Blake, all right? Because when you step into the program, whether you're day one freshman, you know, you might be a fifth string long snap or you think you might never going to hit the field, words mean things and you are a leader. And so we've, we've took in that entire mindset across our team of, you know, being fully bought into each other, no matter what your role is, no matter what your position is, and the guys have kind of collectively riled together in a different type of brotherhood where the Xs and O's don't matter, it's barely about the execution of the love for each other. Wow.