ATHENS - The last time most area sports fans saw Bloomsburg's Blake Rankin, he was carted off the Silver Bowl field after breaking an ankle during the District 4 Class AA football championship game.
Winter arrived and word came out that because Rutgers never wavered on their offer to the Panthers' quarterback, Rankin, even after Scarlet Knights' head coach Greg Schiano left the New Jersey school for the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, stayed true with his commitment to his first choice.
Rankin missed all of the winter sports season, but on Saturday, the senior took second place in the javelin during the District 4 Class AA track and field championships in Athens.
Several things were clear from Rankin's performance - he worked hard to rehab a horrific injury and football isn't the only thing he's good at.
"It feels really good," Rankin said. "I just finished rehab three weeks ago and it's gotten to the point where I don't even notice it anymore."
Rankin was runner-up to Lewisburg's Brandon Smith, who has a remarkable comeback story of his own, by just three feet late Saturday afternoon.
They'll both go to Shippensburg for the PIAA state track and field championships, and after that Rankin will report to Rutgers on June 24 for classes. He'll go without any limp or second thoughts about his ankle.
"It's definitely in football shape and I've been working out for the last two months so I could get it to the point where I don't notice it when I drop back or sprint out," Rankin said. "I've been throwing the past week and it hasn't bothered me at all and cutting on it is fine."
Rankin will be part of the first team coached by Kyle Flood, and after just a brief hesitation, Rankin and the rest of the incoming freshmen decided to hold steady in their commitment.
"When it first happened, we didn't know what to do, but as a recruiting class we got together, we were in the top 25 in the nation, and we just figured we were going to stick together," Rankin said. "We loved Coach Flood, who is there now, and we loved the campus and everything about it."