As soon as Blake Henry took a job as an assistant football coach at Loyola, he knew he wanted to be a head coach in the MIAA A Conference.
Henry played for the Dons and spent five years as a Dons assistant, but Friday he realized his dream. He was named head football coach at Mount St. Joseph.
"It's familiar because it's the conference I played in growing up, so I know the level of competition. In my opinion it's the toughest league in the state. I enjoy the rivalries between all the schools, how well they know each other and for the A Conference, there are no playoffs so there's so much emphasis on each regular-season game. There's a championship mentality for every game you play in," said Henry, 30.
Henry graduated from Loyola in 1998 and went to Northwestern on a football scholarship. He transferred to Wake Forest, where he was a first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference offensive guard as a senior. He had a brief stint with the Atlanta Falcons after signing a free-agent contract and joined Loyola's staff in 2003.
Gaels athletic director Paul Triplett said Henry was chosen from among 45 applicants for the job. Nine candidates were interviewed and he was the top choice of the selection committee."His background, obviously his familiarity with the A Conference and our league, I think that always helps," Triplett said. "His football background and the success he's had as he's been working his way up through the ranks over at Loyola."
Henry will continue to teach at Loyola the rest of this school year, but he will teach religion at St. Joe beginning in the fall.
Friday afternoon, Henry was introduced to the players, some of whom have come off a disappointing injury-riddled 2-8 varsity season.
"Last year was a tough year for them," Henry said, "but the year before that, they were the second-best team in the league and the year before that they tied for the championship. I had a meeting with the players [Friday] and they definitely had a lot of guys that passed the eye test -- any football coach knows sometimes you can look at a guy and see he's a football player as far as build. You've got 100 guys in the room today between grades 9 and 11. That's a lot of football players. The interest is still very high at St. Joe, but the challenge is to getting a new offense and a new defense in in time for the first game."
Henry will begin overseeing weight room workouts after spring break. He is about two weeks away from finalizing his staff, which will include some current St. Joe coaches and some new ones. On the field, he said, he likely will have a defensive coordinator but call the offensive plays himself.
It's no surprise to him that expectations will be high. They are for all A Conference football programs, but his personal expectations are just as high.
"Every year my expectation is to be in the hunt for the championship. It's a diverse school in a variety of different ways. There's 1,100 boys. It's a school that doesn't have a lot of competition as far as other Catholic schools near it, especially in the A conference. It should be a challenge to win every year, but I expect to contend every year for it.
"The biggest challenge, I think, coaching in the A Conference is the head coaches are all the top level of high school coaches. We all know each other and our systems. Everyone has four or five or six games that they scouted on each team, so by the time you play a conference opponent, they know your offense and defense almost as well as you do. That's the big challenge, to win those conference games consistently because we're all so familiar with each other. It becomes like a chess match."
Henry said he brings a philosophy based on accountability and he let the players know that right away.
"I told them [Friday] I'm going to hold them accountable in the classroom and on the field and in the weight room and the coaches are going to do the same, but most importantly they're going to hold each other accountable, do the work together. I told them my hope for them was not to let each other slack, to be competing at all levels while they're in high school."