Five-star Blaylock has potential to play two sports in college
When it is time to go to college, Dominick Blaylock may not solely be a contributor for Georgia's football team.
Blaylock, a five-star receiver in the class of 2019 who committed to the Bulldogs Sunday, is also an accomplished baseball player. At Walton, Blaylock helped his team win the 2016 state championship.
As a result, college baseball coaches have recruited him some, including Georgia's Scott Stricklin.
“He’s met with (Stricklin) a couple of times," said John Woods, Blaylock's stepfather. “He plays for both Walton and 643 Summer (travel team). Right now he’s just focused on football, but if there’s an opportunity, he’d talk to Stricklin about doing both.”
Woods has a baseball background as the owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts, the Double-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.
Woods said Blaylock is thinking about playing both football and baseball in college. The last player to do so was quarterback Sam Vaughn, a walk-on football player who also walked on to the baseball team in 2016. In recent years, football players Sanders Commings and Israel Troup flirted with the idea of playing baseball but never did.
According to the UGA sports information department, Erik Robinson (1994-96), Chris McCranie (1993-96), Cris Carpenter (1985-87), Jimmy Harrell (1981-86), Buck Belue (1978-82) and Jeff Pyburn (1976-80) all played football and baseball.
Charley Trippi is regarded as Georgia's greatest two-sport star, having starred in both football and baseball in the 1940s. In Trippi's era, however, it was common for athletes to participate in more than one sport.
As for Blaylock, he is apparently a pretty good baseball player too. Time will tell whether he plays both football and baseball at Georgia.
“He projects as a shortstop and center fielder as a switch-hitter,” Woods said. “He has been told he could go very high in the MLB draft if he focused more on baseball.”
Brandon Sudge contributed to the reporting of this story.
This story was originally published July 19, 2017 at 10:10 AM with the headline "Five-star Blaylock has potential to play two sports in college ."