.png&width=24&type=webp)
Princeton University Athletics
Veteran Hitter Ready To Take His Shot
September 24, 2003 | Football
Sept. 24, 2003
from the first Princeton game program
It was written all over Blake Perry's chest. He was going to be a Princeton Tiger, and Roger Hughes knew it.
And that wasn't what Hughes wanted to see.
"Coach Hughes was still at Dartmouth when he came to recruit me," Perry says. "I was wearing a Princeton tee shirt, and I asked my coach if I should take it off. He said 'no,' and I just went in there and told him that Princeton was my first choice."
"I joked with him that if he changed his mind," Hughes recalls, "we would like the opportunity to recruit him at Dartmouth. As fate would have it, I was hired in January 2000 and now I've had the pleasure to coach him for three years."
Little did Hughes know just how much of a pleasure that would be, both for himself and the fans of Princeton football.
Fast forward a few years. Hughes, who became the head coach of Princeton football soon after that trip to Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., now enters his fourth season at the helm of the Princeton Tigers. He brings with him some new goals and expectations, especially considering the Tigers' winning season in 2002. He brings experience in a number of areas this season. All four starting defensive linemen from last season have returned. He has two quarterbacks who started at least four games last season and a wide receiver who started nine of 10 games.
And to one of his most inexperienced areas, the defensive backfield, he brings Perry. And Hughes doesn't just bring him to one position.
"I feel much more comfortable now playing any of the positions," Perry says, "because I know the defense so well now. I feel comfortable playing cornerback, taking on the other team's best receiver. I feel comfortable at safety, filling in on the run. I feel comfortable at outside linebacker, when I get to blitz."
Basically, you can put Perry just about anywhere on the field and he'll be fine, just as long as he knows he can hit somebody.
Which, by the way, Hughes may not have known about Perry that first time they met. That isn't because Hughes didn't take the time to study Perry. It's just that, well, Perry didn't hit many people.
"I played a lot of offense in high school," he says. "I remember my first game as a freshman against Lafayette, when I was in on my first tackle. It was really weird, but I remember that first hit."
His opponents have been remembering his hits ever since.
The lucky ones do, at least.
Of course, Perry had his struggles as a freshman, but not the typical freshman struggles of learning to deal with limited playing time. Perry started immediately at safety for Princeton before moving to cornerback during the season. He put up good numbers, with 54 tackles and interceptions against both Penn and Brown, and he is the only Princeton football player on offense or defense ever to start every game of his freshman season.
But there were some rough spots too.
"I feel like I cost the team at least two games by myself," he said. "I just didn't know the coverages."
Besides the obvious jump in talent and speed from high school, the mental preparation that goes into the college game is much greater than anything a freshman can be prepared for. Perry learned quickly that his talents, as plentiful as they were, were fairly useless if he didn't know where he needed to be on any given play.
But if he did cost Princeton two games, there are still five other losses unaccounted for. Perry wasn't the only member of the program experiencing growing pains; there was a new coaching staff, trying to implement a new attitude, and a number of veterans who had to get used to a new system.
"The main thing Coach Hughes tried to bring in was a winning attitude," Perry said. "He told us that we were about winning here. Some other guys were OK with losing, and that's a bad attitude to have."
And while the attitude was changing into the second season, there were still more losses than Perry would have liked to deal with. Still, it wasn't completely unfamiliar territory for the California native to be in.
After all, he did have an older brother.
"(Phillip) was a good athlete, and I was always trying to play with him," Perry said. "He was very good at basketball, and I was always trying to catch up with him."
Whether it was basketball or football (or probably a good number of other physical activities), the youngest of three Perry children took his fair share of beatings at the hands of his older brother and friends. Blake never quit, never went back to playing with the kids his own age.
He did get frustrated at times, though, and he recalls his father telling him how to deal with just such a situation.
"If you play with the big boys," his father, Art, said, "don't come home and cry."
He didn't cry then, and he wouldn't cry after a second straight three-win season. Heading into his junior season, Perry started seeing the development in both his own game and in the overall team.
Much of the progress he has made has come from the mental approach he takes, from watching nearly 10 hours of film per week before a Saturday game, or his greater understanding of just how prepared his coaching staff is.
"The older I've gotten," Perry says, "the more I realized just how much the coaches know about each opponent. I didn't understand it at first."
When Perry watches film, he is looking at a number of different things. Obviously, he needs to understand the general tendencies of the offense-what formations do they run from, pass from, what different sets will they use. He also watches individual players to see what moves they will typically use during a game. Eric Jackson, the defensive backs coach for Princeton, is especially helpful with that part of the film watching. By Wednesday or Thursday, Perry usually feels pretty comfortable with the offense he'll be facing that week.
Clearly, that comfort level was much higher last season than it had been before, since Perry put up career numbers. He recorded 66 tackles, including seven for losses, and he forced two fumbles. He was at his best, and most versatile, in a thrilling 35-32 win at Columbia, when these were the numbers he put up: 11 tackles (eight solo), three tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, one sack and one pass defensed.
And one Ivy League Defensive Player of the Week award.
While every player appreciates individual accomplishments, and Perry would go on to receive All-Ivy recognition at the end of the season, a true team player bases his success on a team's win-loss record. Princeton finished the year with six wins (its first winning season since 1995), and came back in the fourth quarter to win four of them.
"That kind of season lets us be more confident," Perry said. "We trust more in our teammates and our coaching staff. We've been down, and we've come back."
That kind of trust and confidence is crucial for a team, but it's also very timely for Perry. Amazingly, the kid who fell for Princeton in the summer after his junior year in high school when he came to Old Nassau for a football camp is now a senior.
And he knows the clock is ticking. There is no more time for lessons learned and 'we'll be better next year.'
Next year is the real world.
This year's world revolves around that Ivy League championship ring.
"I've been dreaming about that," he says of the elusive Ivy League championship, which Princeton hasn't won since 1995. "It would certainly be a good way to wrap up my time here."
It won't be easy, of course, and it would go against the predictions of the Ivy League media, which picked the Tigers to finish fifth in 2003. While last season ended with a bang (a 28-point fourth quarter against Dartmouth), the offseason just couldn't end quick enough. Princeton lost three players, all former starters, to academic ineligibility.
Two of them played in the defensive backfield, where Perry will now roam as the veteran player with the most varsity experience. After two years of playing cornerback, he may need to move back to safety, depending on the combination that best fits the Princeton defense.
"Blake is a great athlete and a very smart and versatile player," Hughes says. "This gives us the flexibility to use him at a number of positions depending on which defensive package we are in."
That versatility will be tested immediately against a talented Lehigh squad, and will certainly be judged against the high-octane offenses of the Ivy League.
And he's fine with that. All things considered, he'd rather do battle on Saturdays with the guys he has played with over the past few seasons, but he's playing with the big boys now.
And he won't cry.
"The young guys here are way ahead of where I thought they would be now," Perry said. "I was in their shoes, so it's easier for me to understand."
Perry has tried to be another coach to the younger players, whether it's on the field or in the film room. He knows that he can't win an Ivy League championship by himself, and the immediate progress from the likes of Charles Bahlert, David Ochotorena and J.J. Artis will go a long way in determining just how well the 2003 season ends.
When it's over, Perry will try to follow in his father's footsteps and enter the field of medicine. His father, a former football player himself, is an opthalmologist, and Blake is currently applying to postgraduate schools. His motivation, besides continuing to follow in the footsteps of his role model, is to have the opportunity to help people.
But that's for the future.
Right now, he's plenty happy to just hit people.