O’Neil Blake Football - A Brief Description of Football

Football is one of the top viewed sports in the United States of America. O’Neil Blake began playing football while he was a student at Osceola High School. He graduated in 2010, and became a college football player. Between 2012 and 2014, he played for Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. After he graduated from college, he became a graduate student and a football graduate assistant.

Football is a full contact sport that is played between two teams. There are 11 players on each team, and each team has an offense and a defense. The game is divided into four quarters. During each quarter, one team has their offensive players on the field, while the other team has their defensive players on the field. The offensive team has control of the ball, and attempts to carry the ball down to the other side of the field, or to the defensive team’s end zone.

While the offense has the ball, the defense attempts to intercept passes and stop the receivers from moving the ball down the field. They often accomplish this by tackling players from the other team. The winner of the game is the team who has the most points at the end of the fourth quarter. If the two teams are tied, then extra time is added onto the last quarter.

O’Neil Blake started playing football while he was a high school student. He lettered in the sport and earned a college football scholarship, which helped him continue his career in football.
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O’Neil Blake Football - An Often Grim Subject

O’Neil Blake left Glenville State College in West Virginia in search of a more challenging academic environment and a great football program. He found both at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, where he began taking classes and practicing with the football team in the summer of 2012.

He did well on the gridiron and in the classroom and graduated Magna Cum Laude in the spring of 2014. “I started graduate school the following fall,” he recalls. “I am currently in my final semester of graduate school here at LRU, and I am on course to graduate this May.” He is working toward his Master of Business Administration with a concentration on Health Care Administration.

In spite of his workload, he is able to keep up with some of his non-academic interests, such as African American history. The history of Africans in North America is an often-grim subject that deals with some of the worst aspects of humanity, but also some of the best. The first Africans, kidnapped into slavery, arrived in North America around 1619. American independence did not arrive until late in the next century, but after it did slavery was still allowed, and even acknowledged in the Constitution, which guaranteed the right to possess a “person held to service or labor,” a clear reference to slavery. It was not until nearly a hundred years later that slavery was abolished. Even then, another hundred years passed before serious advances were made in civil rights. Even with the election of an African American president, it is a journey that has not yet come to an end.

O’Neil Blake also enjoys reading leadership literature. He has kept up his involvement with football as a graduate assistant and Cornerbacks Coach for the LRU football team.

Sources: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-milestones
http://www.lrbears.com/profile.asp?playerID=2045
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