Elevation

Whether the rivalry elevates their game, or their game elevates the rivalry, Bill Blankenship’s Tulsa Union has ridden a wave of success to become one of America’s best high school football programs.
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Jenks or jinx, nothing could stop Bill Blankenship’s Tulsa Union team from running the table in 2002 for the school’s elusive first state championship in 11 seasons under his leadership.

A 52-3 thrashing of Broken Arrow stifled any chuckles about Blankenship and his veteran staff not being able to win the big one and validates what has been one of high school football’s better-kept secrets outside of the Sooner State.

Inside the Numbers: Ranked 5th by USA Today (Super Prep 25) - finished season 14-0 - won Oklahoma's 6A state title

Just as much as winning has become a habit at 6A Union in Blankenship’s tenure (116-23 record, 11 playoff appearances), being stopped short of grasping state gold had become a bitter ritual as well – made a little more by watching the team’s super rival, Jenks, reign supreme.

If you liked this article, here are three others just like it: 1. One Day at a Time (Ladouceur), Feb. 2003 2. Rocky Mountain High (Logan), Feb. 2002 3. Sweet Redemption (Mischler), Feb. 2001

In fact, four of the previous eight seasons had seen Blankenship’s staff have the Redskins literally at the gate with title game berths, only to walk away in disappointment each time.

A former starting quarterback at the University of Tulsa, Blankenship’s tenure at Union – already significant not only in terms of wins and losses – received its crown jewel by going 14-0 and beating super rival Jenks along the way.

“(They have) been a tremendous cross-town, backyard-type rival. That kind of goes without saying, but it really was an incredible thing before. Then, from about 1998 on, it has kind of taken on a life of its own,” Blankenship said of Union’s neighbor from about five miles away.

Blankenship points to the ‘98 game as really a watershed moment for his program. Though they later would lose to Jenks on the Oklahoma State campus in the state final, Union got past Jenks for the first time in regular season.

Now, the teams have a neutral season game at Skelly Stadium in Tulsa that draws 35,000-40,000 each year for the state’s biggest high school rivalry.

Jenks can still brag about longevity, having won six straight 6A titles before the 2002 season, but they’ve been knocked back into the shadows for the moment.

The two schools have slugged it out repeatedly over the years, with many seasons offering a fan-favorite, regular-season edition only to see tensions heightened even more dramatically for a postseason encore.

“What I continually tell people, and I think (Jenks coach) Allan Trimble does the same, is that what we’ve done is elevate each other. As they raise the bar, we continue to strive and catch them. The more we have to do to catch them, the more they have to raise the bar,” Blankenship said.

Raising the bar is something Blankenship knows something about. He’s had to elevate his game and his thinking since his days as a kid in Spiro, Okla., where his dad was the head basketball and football coach (and building an Oklahoma sports hall of fame resume).

He went sport to sport like the typical small-town kid, enjoying the competition with a younger and older brother. He became a high school wishbone quarterback who liked to throw the ball.

Quarterback guru Jerry Rhome would recruit him to Tulsa. Before he had won his three letters and graduated with a degree in environmental biology, Blankenship would also be tutored by Larry Coker and John Cooper, who’d become head coach after F.A. Dry.

“I am very proud of Bill,” said Cooper, who spent 14 years as head coach of Ohio State after his stint at Tulsa. “He is one of the top high school coaches in not only Oklahoma, but the entire country. He has produced some outstanding football teams and individuals, and he has a great track record.

“Bill was always a very intelligent quarterback and a student of the game.”

“Bill’s success doesn’t surprise me at all,” added Coker, former Tulsa offensive backfield coach (1979-82) and current head coach at the University of Miami. “I never had any doubt about it ... Bill understands the game of football, and he has a lot of leadership qualities about him. He was never a fiery personality, he has always been more focused and methodical with his coaching and direction.”

Sounds like a pedigree for the perfect coach, doesn’t it? Son of a coach, quarterback, coached by good offensive minds...

Instead, Blankenship, whose faith remains a big part of his life, took a job with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes after graduating. He expected to eventually parlay that biology degree into big money working for an oil company, not coaching middle school kids or tirelessly as a graduate assistant.

But that wouldn’t last long. After three years at the FCA, Blankenship says he got a call from a buddy from his playing days at Tulsa. The friend was on the board of Eastwood, a small private Christian school and asked if Blankenship had ever considered coaching. Blankenship, admitting his ego, said he had, but was a little reluctant to work his way up from seventh graders.

Surging past that, the buddy laid out Eastwood’s situation. After some internal strife, many of the administration and staff had bolted, leaving to create another school. They needed a coach and athletic director, and this guy thought Blankenship might be willing to take a leap into such a situation.

“Even though it was a small school, it was pretty wild to think I had no coaching experience and yet I was going to get the opportunity to be a head coach,” Blankenship said.

Like many first-year coaches, Blankenship got schooled, but he also got hooked. He was in it for the long haul.

“We went 2-8 that year, I figured out really quickly that I didn’t know a lot about coaching, but this was what I was going to be passionate about in my life – something I really felt I was made to do. I began to really see this as my calling in life,” Blankenship said.

“The second year, we won another, finished 3-7, and they closed the school down. Here it is that I finally decided what I want to do with my life ... and just like that, I don’t have a job,” Blankenship laughs, recounting the irony.

Blankenship was out on the street, but with some lessons in the back of his head.

“More than anything, I learned how not to do things. You hate to have that as your experience level, but the truth is a lot of times we learn by what we don’t do very well. I thought I knew football, and I think I did, but I was very totalitarian or whatever you want to call it.

“I was running the whole show. I was trying to coach the line, the defense, the backfield, everything. I’d get mad because my coaches were over there with their arms folded. Then I realized later in my career I’m the one what set that whole scenario in motion, because I was trying to do it all,” Blankenship said.

Having learned to delegate, Blankenship hit the clinic and interview circuit, trying to learn everything he could. After interviewing for the head coaching job, Blankenship eventually ended up with then 5A Sapulpa as an offensive coordinator to Steve Spavitol. He’d soak up plenty from Spavitol (who now has been Blankenship’s defensive coordinator for 13 seasons).

From Sapulpa, Blankenship headed back home to coach 3A Spiro after begging the superintendent for a chance.

“I saw where my alma mater in Spiro, the coach had retired. So I called the superintendent and asked if he’d consider me for the job. He said, ‘Well, I don’t think you want this job,’ and I said, ‘Dad, I really want this job.’”

The retired Blankenship was superintendent, and ended up getting his son in the door. Four years and a state championship game appearance later, bigger things beckoned, and Blankenship headed to Edmond Memorial, where Rick Jones had left to coach Tulsa Union. Two years and two 6-5 seasons later for Blankenship, Jones left again to become a college assistant.

Blankenship, following in Jones’ footsteps yet again, leapt at the chance to return to Tulsa to coach Union.

Eleven seasons later, many of his foes probably wish he’d find another place to go, as Blankenship has taken the word “sleeping” out of the term “sleeping giant” that Union used to be.

“The table was set when they got there 11 years ago. The school was growing, but had been winning not just in football, but other sports. The winning just hadn’t equated to any state championships.

“There was a very good, strong winning program. They had not really gone to the next level. They were a playoff team, but the knock on them was that they would make the playoffs and lose in the first or second round. They just hadn’t gotten over the hump,” Blankenship said.

Blankenship’s aggressive style has fueled Union’s rise to the state’s elite. Blankenship inherited a good young QB when he moved to Union, altered his philosophies to fit a one-back attack and has been running it since.

“We know what we’re doing in it. We like to spread you out, but we also like to run the football. That really interests a lot of people, that we’re one-back in our approach, but we’ve not had a guy not rush for at least 1,000 yards every year that we’ve been here. We think the key to a successful offense is balance, so we keep running the football and finding quarterbacks that can play,” Blankenship said.

Every quarterback that has played for Blankenship but one has gone on to play college football as a quarterback, and the exception was drafted to play pro baseball.

Defensively, the Redskins have evolved a bit. When they arrived at Union, Blankenship’s staff was unique in running the spread. But when Bob Stoops brought now Texas Tech head coach Mike Leach to OU a few years ago, the impact on the Oklahoma prep game was immediate.

Now, Blankenship’s isn’t the most chance-taking compared to some of Union’s opponents, who have ramped up to a shotgun, four-wideouts, one-back approach.

“In our first 10 games (in 2002), because we had looked into that going into the season, I think there were seven out of 10 who were one-back teams. In the playoffs, interestingly, we played a one-back team in the first round, then two two-back, run-oriented teams in the next two rounds. We played Broken Arrow in the finals and they were a spread back,” Blakenship said, documenting what he says is a drastic paradigm shift from what Oklahoma high school teams did in the past.

While the Redskins haven’t really changed offensively, they’ve gone from more of a conservative defensive approach to being more proactive in trying to derail this proliferation of pass-happy foes.

“People are doing a lot of the things that we were doing before,” Blankenship said. “We’re now a little more of a less wide-open offense compared to some of the teams we play, just because we’re balanced. Defensively, it’s caused us to evolve from read-and-react zone-type team to being a little more get-in-your-face, press covering with our corners and really getting attack-oriented with our defense front.”

While the adjustments have often been challenging, Blankenship credits still going to clinics and talking to other coaches as a way of staying ahead of the game.

“It’s been a good transition for us. I think we’’ve been able to stay up on what’s been going on. I think defensively we’ve done a better job of adjusting ... offensively, this had been kind of what we do, we’ve just gotten better at it.

“Defensively, we used to be very much a five-man-front team. The more people spread us out, the more we were talked into substituting and having nickel packages and all that. So the last couple of years, it’s changed the way we look at personnel on defense. We’ve gone to trying to find more of those multipurpose guys, kids who can play outside backer and cover somebody, and still be a force on the run,” Blankenship said.

Union seems to have a virtual pipeline of talent that keeps developing quite nicely, fueled by continuity on the varsity staff and consistent philosophy that threads through the feeder programs.

Blankenship has a 12-man staff to handle the 140 kids they have out in 10th, 11th and 12th grade. Spavitol has been with him 13 seasons. Offensive line guru Mark Garner trumps that, with 17 years alongside Blankenship dating back to Spiro.

“I think I’m his adopted son, it’s been that long. It’s been awesome. I probably can’t think of a person that’s impacted my life personally or the lives of our kids more than Coach B,” Garner said.

“He’s very, very intelligent. And a very intelligent coach can take things that are complicated and make them simple. I guess if I could put our program in one sentence, it would be ‘Less is more.’ What I mean is that we take a few things we do and we do them extremely well and out of many, many different formations.

“If you can take a few things and be creative in doing them, then you can hang your hat on them and do them in multiple ways. You can be successful and not make mistakes. That’s the biggest thing I think Coach B has done in 17 years,” Garner said.

Blankenship also supervises the six guys who run the freshman program and the eight more that control the eighth graders. Kids make grades and stay out of trouble, they can be on the team. No cuts, says Garner.

“It’s not just wins and losses ... we probably keep more kids out in our program than in any in Oklahoma. There are a lot of kids in our program that other people would have kicked out. These kids know that if they can be good citizens, regardless of athletic ability, they can be a part of our program. And I think it impacts their life,” Garner said.

Blankenship and his staff have already tried to wrap up the memories of a cherished campaign as the hard work for a title defense is already in full swing in Union’s offseason program.

But Blankenship, who questioned the leadership of his team coming into the 2002 season, admits he won’t shake the memories anytime soon. And not only for the hardware or the fact another strong crop of kids signed to play Division I.

“I’ve had years where we won a lot of games and it wasn’t a lot of fun and vice versa, where you might not have won a lot of games but loved being around your players. It is such a joy when you can get both. This was the year we won a lot of games, and these guys were fun to coach. I mean, I’m really going to miss going out there and having the type of practices and kind of bus rides, that kind of stuff, that these guys made it fun to be a part of,” Blankenship said.

Blankenship’s far enough now in his own coaching career that he’s reaping some of the other off-the-field rewards of coaching, too. Just as he remembered his dad doing when he was a kid growing up in Spiro.

“I love to have the guys come back and want to see us. The alums, the guys that still value what I or their position coaches think. We have guys come back and, visit is great, but they also want to, just kinda want your approval. I think that’s what I stole from my dad, I loved being in the house growing up when these kids would come back from college, or when they’re 30 years old and thanksgiving time and they need to see the coach,” Blankenship said.

“I think that over the years, that has become what’s rewarding to me, is when I have the relationships that transcend the season. They still want to come, they still want to be part, just check in and see how I’m doing.”

Blankenship hopes they’ll be checking in for a long time. He’s thankful that everything has turned out so well, as are plenty of supporters and avid fans of Tulsa prep football.

Once a Hurricane, now causing a storm with his brand of football at the high school level, Blankenship is doing just fine for a former small town wishbone quarterback.

“Once I came to school here, I just kind of became a Tulsa guy. The university is special to me, but the overall experience here is just neat, honestly. I don’t know how to explain it other than I hit the wave just right,” Blankenship said.

“I caught the wave and I’m not going to jump off until this thing crashes on the beach. We’re enjoying it.”

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