Column: At Loyola, football standout Kelly Blake embraces role of student-athlete

Somebody is doing a good job keeping the oldest high school in Southern California going strong at 150 years old.

There are clear signs that important lessons are being learned at Loyola High, where nearly 1,300 teenage boys are receiving a Jesuit-based education amid the gothic, college-like buildings in the Pico-Union neighborhood near downtown Los Angeles.

All you need to do is run into senior Kelly Blake to understand the dreaming and achieving taking place.

With a 4.5 grade-point average and having scored 35 of out a possible 36 on the ACT, Blake is at the top of any honor roll. He’s also one of the school’s best athletes, a 6-foot-1, 185-pound receiver-strong safety who can deliver a two-handed dunk in the gym or ride a surfboard if asked.

“He exemplifies what it means to be a student-athlete,” football Coach Marvin Sanders said. “He’s a young man who takes as much pride in his academics as he does in football.”

Blake blushes when asked whether he ever feels embarrassment having never received a grade other than A in high school.

“I guess it is a little embarrassing, but I think it’s important to do your best,” he said.

As a football player, he missed most of last season because of a back injury suffered as a sophomore while triple jumping. It meant that he entered this season largely unknown except to those familiar with his talents.

He’s making up for lost time in each of the Cubs’ first three victories. In the season opener against Studio City Harvard-Westlake, Blake had an interception and two tackles for losses. Against Palmdale Highland, he had a sack, a fumble recovery and two tackles for losses. Against San Diego St. Augustine, he had nine tackles and an interception.

He wants to keep playing football in college.

“I really played only three games last year. That’s not enough. I haven’t been seen by all the coaches that may want to take a look. I just want to have the best season I can and I’m sure something will happen,” he said.

The good news is Blake’s academic achievements have left him with many options. Since he was in second grade and discovered he could do multiplication tables as fast as any calculator, he has loved math. Calculus, algebra, geometry — he’s gotten all A’s, plus a perfect math score on the ACT.

But it’s only after asking him about life at Loyola that you realize what the three-plus years there have done for him.

“They’ve set me up to perform to the best of my ability, do whatever I want to do,” he said. “All the teachers are really motivating and coaches too. It gives everyone the opportunity to do their best.”

With games being televised, players being hyped as future college standouts and fans asking for autographs, sometimes forgotten in the high school sports scene is that players are supposed to be students first.

Blake is going all out to be both a student and an athlete, but his Loyola experience has taught him the importance of what happens in the classroom.

“It’s not necessarily about being the best in football,” he said. “You need to have options later in life. Of the utmost importance is your academics and school. If you can perform well in those, you can give yourself opportunities to go to a great college and get a great job, because sometimes football doesn’t work out.”

For 41 years until his retirement this past year, Allen Martin was a math teacher at Loyola. Blake was in his last calculus class.

“There’s been amazing kids and Kelly is one of them,” Martin said. “It kept me going all those years.”

Lots of Loyola graduates have become lawyers or judges, and with the Cubs playing Thursday night against Los Angeles Salesian, there was probably a frantic effort to rush out of court buildings to attend the game. Blake didn’t disappoint, scoring two touchdowns in a 52-22 win. He’s a worthy representative of a school still going strong at 150 years old.

eric.sondheimer@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATSondheimer