Baseball is well-ingrained into Noah Blank’s family

The Blank family is known across Northwest Ohio for its baseball heritage. Lake 2020 graduate Noah Blank is following that tradition.
“My dad (Eddie) helped me fall love with baseball along with my grandpa and Uncle Wes. It was kind of like they are both legends at Lake when it came to pitching, and it just kind of a tradition-thing to keep throwing,” Noah said.
Wes, a 2004 Lake graduate, was inducted into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 2010. He still owns the pitching record for single season wins (9), which he shares with Austin Fouty (2019), Jacob Boelkens (2019) and Jordan Bekier (2017). Wes also owns outright the career record for wins (25, 2001-04), single season strikeouts (125, 2004) and career strikeouts (314). Noah has a record, too, after posting a 0.00 ERA his junior year.
Noah will play college baseball for coach John Parisho at Owens Community College, joining countless metro Toledo area graduates who are signing up to play for the Express next year.
“It is close to home and my mom went there, and so did my dad, so that was good, and I had the opportunity to just play baseball, so it was like, ‘Yeah, that works,’” Noah said.
Like many of those joining the Express, Noah did not get to have a senior season last spring because of the coronavirus pandemic, but Lake coach Greg Wilker says he would have put up great numbers and earned the chance to go to the next level. He joins classmate Scott Mackiewicz, who will play for the University of Toledo.
“The big thing with Noah is his junior year he broke a school record by not giving up a run the whole year in 29 innings pitched. He was only 2-0, but a lot of years he would have been my No. 1,” Wilker said.
“It’s just that I had two seniors who were just outstanding. Austin Fouty was 9-0 on the season and Jacob Boelkens was 9-1, so he didn’t get as many innings as he would have a lot of years, but he has a big upside. He has a very strong arm and he’s starting to fill out more,” Wilker continued.
“Same as Scotty, too — they’ve added 10 or 15 pounds of muscle here, which I told them they have to do if they plan on playing at the next level. Both are quality kids from great families, and I think they will do well in college.”
As juniors, Blank and Mackiewicz were part of a Lake team that went 27-1 overall and 14-0 to win the NBC title. Four seniors from that team were slated to play college ball but also had no spring season. Catcher Dawson Delventhal was headed to the University of Northwest Ohio-Lima, second baseman Harry Jackson to Lourdes University, right fielder/pitcher Luke Walsh to Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Boelkens to Bluffton University.
As Lake was able to reboot its team over the summer, Blank pitched four innings as the Flyers defeated Genoa. Blank said, “It was good to be out there again.”
Noah will head to an Owens team that went defunct by the college because of funding issues, but was supposed to restart this spring, dropping from the NJCAA Division II level to Division III by eliminating scholarships.
“I was disappointed when they (Owens) cut that. There are so many kids in our area. I mean, from Lake we’ve had so many kids going to Owens, not necessarily for baseball, but just going there in general. I think there is so much good baseball around here,” Wilker said.