Above: Volunteer assistant coach at Mortimer Jordan, Darnell Blankenship, has overcome incredible odds and is described by others as an inspiration.

Mortimer Jordan athletic trainer Chris King jokes that former Blue Devil football player Darnell Blankenship punctuates his sentences with giggles.

“He has the greatest personality,” King said. “He’s a total inspiration as a person.”

Blankenship, a volunteer assistant coach for the football team playing for a Class 5A state championship at 7 tonight against St. Paul’s, has inspired by coming back from a pair of strokes while never losing his positive perspective.

“I’ve never seen a kid before in my life – and he’s a man now,” King said, “without a smile on his face.”

Blankenship was a tailback in his playing days at Mortimer Jordan, one who had a lot of speed. “Oh my goodness,” Principal Craig Kanaday recalled. “He could run like a gazelle.”

The running back was a 2005 honorable mention All-State selection of The Birmingham News, according to the Alabama High School Football Historical Society. His football success came with a battle to keep his blood pressure in check.

After graduating in 2006, Blankenship enrolled at Gadsden State. Halfway through his freshman year, he suffered a pair of strokes that left his right side paralyzed.

Recovery was tough.

King said Blankenship, now 28, was initially bed-ridden. “We didn’t think he was going to walk again, much less anything else,” he said. “He fought through that, learned how to use 90 percent of his body again.”

Said Blankenship: “It was hard. It was a process. I had to work hard every day to get back to where I could walk. One of the coaches here, Coach (Michael) Burrow, encouraged me to keep striving to get better.”

The former tailback had been an average student who had to overcome academically. “He worked his tail off to get by,” King recalled, “but he always worked his tail off.”

After recovering from his strokes, Blankenship went back, graduated Gadsden State and last December earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Now Blankenship is on the Blue Devil sideline again, working as a volunteer assistant coach. He also works as a dispatcher for the Warrior Police Department.

“I played with some of these guys’ brothers in high school and to see them grow from youth to almost adults is an awesome feeling,” he said. “Last year, I was on the sideline when they lost in the second round of the playoffs. They were hurt and most of those kids came back and they’re hungry.

“Now they’re reaping what they sowed. It’s an awesome feeling.”