Blake receives instructions from Coach Star Photo Courtesy of jladd

Cokes certainly has worked. She’s logged endless hours in the gym training with her father or running the trails at Englewood Metro Park.

She hits the books as hard as she crashes the boards and will major in pre-med. Cokes starts summer school in Asheville just days after she graduates from Trotwood. After summer school, she’ll take a short break and then return to North Carolina for the beginning of fall classes and the Bulldogs’ hoops season.

“She’s always balanced school and basketball,” Janeen Cokes said of her talented daughter. “It will be a bigger step, a bigger commitment, but I think she’ll do well because she’s just used to it.”

The second oldest of four kids, Cokes started playing basketball in the fourth grade, despite her mom’s desire for her only daughter to be a “prissy” cheerleader. Cokes got serious quickly and said she cried when she didn’t make the ‘A’ team for the Dayton Lady HoopStars AAU club.

But by eighth grade, she was hearing from interested universities. She remembers a memorable visit to Michigan State during which she saw the Spartans football team battle Notre Dame.

Cokes was a central figure on this year’s GWOC North Division championship team. The 6-foot-1 forward was one of several senior leaders.

“It’s funny. Everybody says this kind of stuff, but Blake really is the epitome of the ideal student-athlete,” said rookie coach Star Weng, lamenting the fact that she only had one year with Cokes. “As a first-year coach, that meant a lot to me.”

Weng’s lasting memory of Cokes was the telling performance she had in a 78-72 double overtime win against Northmont. Cokes remained poised down the stretch and willed Trotwood to the ‘W’ with key rebounds and putbacks.

The same effort goes into her academics. Cokes said time management is critical, so she’ll do whatever is required, such as reading a chapter in the locker room prior to a game.

Such discipline will serve her well in pre-med. Cokes is interested in psychology, but ultimately wants to be a reconstructive surgeon because of her desire to help people in need.

She would take that opportunity over the WNBA any day.

“Basketball is fun to play,” Cokes said. “It’s been around me for a long time. When I take a break after the season, I don’t like taking it too long because I want to be back in the gym. I want to dribble, I want to do something.

“I’ll always have a love for it, but my education will definitely take me further.”