Bill Blankenship Returns To Help BTW Players, Coaches

The Booker T. Washington Hornets kicked off spring football practice Monday with a special assistant coach - former University of Tulsa head coach Bill Blankenship.

Blankenship is volunteering as a quarterbacks coach under new Booker T. Washington head coach Brad Calip.

"I knew things were tough on the economic side of things right now," Blankenship explained. "I just called him and said I don't know if you've got your whole staff put together, but do you have any spots?"

Calip said, "I told my quarterback in the weight room, 'I've got a quarterback coach for you,' and he said 'who?' I said, 'Bill Blankenship,' and he was like 'get out of here!' He was ecstatic and excited, all our kids are excited because they all know Coach Blankenship, they went to his camps and stuff, so he's going to bring a lot of knowledge and wisdom to our staff, so I'm pretty excited about that."

Blankenship says he loves being back on the field coaching players, but that's not all he's doing. With more than 30 years of experience at the high school and college levels, he's also coaching the coaches.

"I told my staff not only is he going to help y'all, he's going to make me become a better head coach," Calip said. "Some things I probably don't know I can go to him for wisdom and so forth, so I'm pretty excited about that."

"The guys on offense, they want me to just come in and really they are very hungry young coaches and they want to go to another level," Blankenship explained. "I don't know if I've got any answers, but we're going to tell them stuff we've been doing, and what works, and we're going to see if we can do it now."

Three state championships at Union High School and a Conference USA coach of the year award say he might have a pretty good idea.