WATCHING NORTHSIDE FOOTBALL GAMES FROM THE PRESS BOX WAY OF LIFE FOR BLAYLOCK

Watching countless Northside football games from the press box at Mayo-Thompson Stadium has become a way of life for Grizzly alum Matt Blaylock. A 1995 graduate of Northside, Blaylock spent 15 seasons as the radio voice for the Grizzlies. Now, he is in his second season as the public address announcer for Northside home games. But well before that, Blaylock was no stranger to watching the Grizzlies from high above the field. “Just from the start, and even before I played here because my dad played here and my mom went here and at one time I lived right down the street, my dad (Mike) worked in the press box,” Matt Blaylock said. “He was the spotter for the PA guy, so when I was a kid, especially when we were living down here, we would walk down here and I was at every game from when I was a little kid back when you had popcorn in the press box and you would have a glass bottle of Coke. “So I grew up here.” Eventually, Blaylock would find his way onto the Mayo-Thompson field as a player himself, playing defensive end under legendary coach Joe Fred Young. “We ran the old veer option and we were very tough to stop; we gave up less than 13 points a game (on defense),” Blaylock said. “Of course, the game’s changed so much; you were getting six to eight possessions tops back then.” Blaylock’s Grizzly teams went to the playoffs in each of his three seasons there. But to this day, he still can’t get over his final game at Northside, a state semifinal loss to Pine Bluff his senior year. “It was one of those games where we totally dominated the game in the stat book but we lost that game. ... We should have won that game, and Pine Bluff did go on the next week to destroy (Little Rock) McClellan in the state championship game,” Blaylock said. Blaylock also played baseball and basketball at Northside. He actually liked baseball more than even football, but there was a reason he stopped playing baseball after high school. “I enjoyed baseball most, actually, but was fortunate and blessed to get a scholarship to play college football at Arkansas Tech and I had to give baseball up at that point,” Blaylock said. He went on to play defensive end at Tech and was part of the school’s transition from NAIA to an NCAA Division II school. “That first year was pretty rough, it was a big step up,” Blaylock said. “Then my senior year, we beat (Central Arkansas), which was Tech’s big-time rival back then, and we beat them for the first time in 25 years. I was just in the right place at the right time; I made a big play on that last play of that game.” Blaylock made it back to Northside in 2001, taking over the radio play-by-play duties, mainly working alongside one of his former high school teammates, Gabe Scrivner. The two currently still work together in the PA booth. Now that he’s the PA voice instead of the radio voice, Blaylock has seen a major difference between the two duties. “To be honest, as a PA guy, it’s way more involved than what I thought. ... It’s non-stop, there are no breaks,” he said. “In radio, you can go to break with commercials and you can kind of do whatever you want to do, but (as PA guy) I’ve got to do all of the music, I’ve got to announce the cheerleaders and the drill team, all of it never stops and then you can’t be wrong. “It is definitely more challenging.” A reason Blaylock went from the radio booth to the PA booth was the chance to spend more time with his wife of 18 years, Shelly. The couple have two daughters, Madison, a ninth grader at Chaffin who will also play on Northside’s softball team, and Molly Kate, a sixth grader at Euper Lane Elementary. “I owe my wife a lot of Friday nights, and my kids are getting older now, so I decided not to make all of those road trips,” Matt Blaylock said.

WATCHING NORTHSIDE FOOTBALL GAMES FROM THE PRESS BOX WAY OF LIFE FOR BLAYLOCK

BUCK RINGGOLD

Times Record | 8/26/2018

PHOTO CREDIT: File Photo