ANNAPOLIS — Davey Blake is the most accomplished wrestler to come out of Kent County High School.
It would be difficult, nay impossible, to argue otherwise.
He’s a three-time Maryland high school state champion, a two-time conference runner-up at the collegiate level, and has been coaching ever since he wrestled his final match.
Recently, he was applauded for his lifetime of service to the sport with induction into the Maryland Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame — one year after his father Art was inducted posthumously.
Davey Blake and the other 2025 honorees — Hector Hernández, Ben Arneson, Harry Barnabae, Sean Edelin, John Furgeson and Michael Whisner — were introduced as “the latest group of wrestling legends” in the welcome by Dan Zottarelli, chapter president.
“This is a big deal,” added Zottarelli, a 2002 hall of fame inductee who was Davey Blake’s high school coach.
As was the case with his father, Davey Blake also easily met the hall of fame criteria: integrity; at least 20 years of service to the sport; and a commitment to the community and the youth in it.
In the fine print, commitment was defined as “dedication to the development of leadership and citizenship in young people through the sport of wrestling.”
After four years as the assistant coach at alma mater McDaniel College, Blake became the head coach in 2007 and remained in the role for 11 years. Over those 15 years, he coached seven NCAA All-Americans, 15 NCAA qualifiers, 14 Centennial Conference champions and more than 30 Centennial Conference medalists.
Currently third on the all-time wins list for Western Maryland/McDaniel, he coached two Centennial Conference Wrestlers of the Year and two Centennial Conference tournament Outstanding Wrestlers. Blake also coached three Chris Clifford Award recipients [presented to the Centennial Conference’s graduating senior with the most accomplished four-year career] and two Alexander Award recipients [presented to McDaniel’s outstanding male athlete].
He is currently the head women’s wrestling coach at Francis Scott Key High School in Carroll County, where he also is chair of the special education department.
In Blake’s first four seasons, FSK has seen its roster grow from four to 20.
Blake has coached nine girls to the state championship podium while also leading his team to the inaugural Carroll County girls wrestling team title in 2023 and a third-place finish at the Maryland state championships.
Before all his collegiate and coaching successes, Blake, who grew up in Betterton, was a Trojan.
At Kent County High School, Blake was the outstanding male athlete in his graduating class of 1998, earning varsity letters in football, wrestling, baseball and lacrosse. [He is a member of Kent County High School’s inaugural hall of fame class of 2008.]
He stood out in all four sports, even lacrosse, which he took up as a senior.
But he excelled in wrestling.
He won three state championships in a row — at 112 pounds, again at 112 and then at 125 — after finishing second as a freshman in 1995. His narrow 4-2 loss to Sparrows Point’s Tommy Free in the Class 1A/2A 103-pound championship bout was one of only two losses Blake experienced in high school while he won a jaw-dropping 141 matches.
He was a Cliff Keen All-American and the Maryland recipient of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award as a senior, and in 2012 was inducted into the Maryland State Wrestling Hall of Fame as a highlight of the state wrestling tournament at the University of Maryland.
Blake wrestled for three seasons at NCAA Division I Appalachian State University in North Carolina, where he was a part of the 2001 Southern Conference championship team and finished second at 149 pounds at the 2001 Southern Conference tournament.
He transferred to his father’s alma mater Western Maryland College [now McDaniel College] to finish his degree and wrestling eligibility. He was a part of Western Maryland’s 2002 Centennial Conference championship team and was a Centennial Conference runner-up at 141 pounds in 2003.
Injuries cut his junior and senior seasons short, but Blake finished his career as one of the most talented wrestlers to don a Green Terror singlet.
The National Wrestling Hall of Fame-Maryland Chapter induction banquet, now in its 24th year, was held Nov. 9 at The Graduate Hotel in Annapolis.
Family, friends and former teammates were in attendance to see Davey Blake receive his green jacket. Among them were fellow Trojans Gordon Boyer ’97, a state runner-up; state champion Jacob Kirwan ’01; two-time state champion Donnie Yerkie ‘01, the inaugural recipient of the hall of fame Maryland Chapter’s Medal of Courage in 2001; two-time state champion and three-time state finalist Mikey Blake, ’01; and former assistant and then head coach Andy Jones.
Davey Blake now lives in Westminster with his wife Caitlin and their children, Julia and JoJo.
In his acceptance speech, he thanked his family; the hall of fame committee, especially Dan Zottarelli and Dicky Schmertzler for shepherding him through the process and for their unwavering support through the years; and his Kent County, Eastern Shore, McDaniel and Carroll County “people.”
Blake gave shout-outs to his mother Ginny “for always steadying the ship and making sure that we were able to get after our goals and go after the things we wanted to do” and younger brother Mikey, a two-time state champion at KCHS who was his workout partner from junior league through college.
Printed below, with permission, is Davey Blake’s acceptance speech.
I started wrestling when I was 5 years old for the Kent Mat Monsters at the Parks and Recreation building in Worton, Maryland. Practices were Tuesday and Thursday nights. My dad, Zott [Dan Zottarelli] and Mr. [Dennis] Seip were the coaches. My dad would take the Bronco and scoop up all the kids in between Betterton and Worton on the way. We would have to roll out the mats before practice and roll them up afterwards. I never remember mopping them though? The older and experienced kids would practice on one mat and the younger and newer wrestlers would practice on the other. I loved it.
As an athlete, wrestling taught me all the intangible qualities that we hear everyone talk about. Qualities like work ethic, discipline, resiliency, honoring commitments and mental toughness.
But it wasn’t until I became a coach and had to pass it on, did I truly understand those lessons.
It wasn’t until I became a husband and a father did I realize that these lessons were not just a useful metaphor for life, but an essential skill set needed to persevere when life depends on you to do so.
As an athlete, for me at least, wrestling was all about winning. That is what I focused on and that is what I cared about.
As a coach, wrestling became more about the relationships we build and teaching about those intangible qualities. Winning is always the goal, but that is not where the value of the sport lies.
I actually came to this realization pretty quickly in my first year as a head coach. We were wrestling NYU up at Wilkes University as part of a tri-meet. Before the match, we talked to the team about looking to the coaches for choice in the second and third periods. In the first match, we get choice in the second period. Wrestler looks over. I say go down. He picks neutral. I immediately walked onto the mat and ended the match. Forfeited right there. Everyone was stunned. At that moment, I did not care whether we won or lost that dual. It was not about control. It was about principle. It was about trust and faith. A team has to have trust in their coach and faith that the work they are putting in will pay off at some point in some way. As a young coaching staff, we needed the team to trust us and put their faith into what we were saying. That there will be a payoff.
When I first took the head coaching job at McDaniel, at 27 years old, I reached out to John Lowe, the goofy wizard that he is, for advice. He told me “You have to make it bigger than it really is.”
At the surface level, what can be taken from that statement is that you have to be charismatic, preach the tenets and find ways for kids to buy in.
This is true. And it is different for each group.
At the college level, it was connecting and communicating at a more adult level.
When I went down to high school coaching the boys, it was a similar process. They needed a lot more prompting and a stronger hand to guide, but it was similar.
Coaching high school girls, way different process! You have to communicate the message in a different way. I have softened my tone and really taken a more individualistic approach with the ladies. You also should always make sure you have hair ties. It sounds funny, but that simple act lets them know that you are in tune to their specific needs. That helps build trust.
I am now in my third year with helping out the junior leagues, coaching 4- to 10-year-olds. I am actually still figuring this one out. But if you can speak Roblox or in memes, you can capture their attention long enough to get them to do a double leg.
“Make it bigger than it is” goes much deeper. A phrase that I throw out with my teams is you have to be tougher than the drill, tougher than practice, and tougher than anything the day can throw at you.
Four and a half years ago my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. It threw our lives into a spiral. I spent the first eight months in a fog, going through the motions of life but struggling daily to uphold the responsibilities of work, coaching, being a husband and father.
But then, after watching Caitlin’s strength and will to fight, something clicked. I decided that I did not want to feel like that anymore. I didn’t want to be depressed and sad and in that fog anymore. It was time to practice what I preached. I was in control of my attitude and my effort. And with the help of many of you here in attendance tonight, I was able to draw on those intangibles that this great sport teaches us to pick myself up off the mat, push forward and do the necessary things.
I teach my kids that the hardest things in the world to do are the things you do not want to do. Wrestling helped me master this skill.
Our family’s hardships are not unique. All of us in this room have faced, are facing, or will face situations that we will struggle with. The payoff is being able to draw from the experiences that wrestling has given us to push through, to do the hard and necessary things. We don’t always win, but we are equipped to handle it when that happens.
This is why, as coaches, we need to make wrestling bigger than it really is.
Because it is.
In closing, I want to give my last thanks to my father, Art, who introduced me to this sport and who I was blessed to honor on this stage last year.
Thank you, Dad. It started with you and I hope we are doing you proud by continuing to pass along what you taught us.
