
Speedy Kalen Ballage (7) hopes to lead Falcon to a state title in 2013.
Courtesy photo
Kalen Ballage knows about misperceptions. His older brother, Keenen, dealt with them as well.
Keenen Ballage is a former star running back for
Falcon. Kalen Ballage currently occupies that title. He witnessed the time when his older brother got pigeonholed as a certain type of back, a one-dimensional one.
As it was in the past with Keenen, it is a mistake now to label Ballage a one-niche player.
"That's the thing about my brother, he was small and speedy, but he also had some power to him," Kalen Ballage said. "It's the opposite for me. People think, hey, he's big, so he has to be slow. I'm a lot faster than anyone would think."
Ballage has the hard evidence to back that up. He ran a state-best 10.64 in the 100-meter dash last spring at the Spartan Invitational. He was injured for the state meet and finished eighth at 11.03, but the point is, he's fast. Blow-by-you fast.
And at 6-foot-2, 220 pounds, that's a scary prospect for would-be tacklers.
"He can run off tackle, and that's when he's at his best," Falcon co-coach Terry Poirier said. "If he was just blazing around the corner that'd be one thing, but he might be even more explosive running off tackle."
Ballage is starting to get some Division I looks as he enters his senior season. He seldom was the primary focus of the Falcons' offense last fall, so his talents only came into clear focus late in the season.
In a playoff loss to eventual Class 4A champion Monarch, Ballage sliced the Coyotes defense for 53 yards on the first play. He scored two touchdowns in the first half of the 24-14 loss and finished with 128 yards on the ground.
His performance prompted Monarch coach Phil Bravo at the time to proclaim: "He's a big kid, around 6-foot-3 and 215 and he ran a 10.9 in the 100 meters last season. How do you simulate that in practice? You don't."
The Falcons had a tumultuous off-season as former coach Trevor Hudson resigned. The well-liked Hudson had been suspended as part of an unintentional recruiting violation and was forced to miss time at the end of the season. He decided to part ways during the winter.
Falcon experienced drama in hiring a new coach, including one candidate who twice decided not to take the post after reportedly being offered the job (one time because of health reasons). That led Poirier and Brian Green to petition for the job.
The longtime tandem coached Falcon's eighth-grade team and was familiar with nearly all the players, including Ballage, who came through. They will assume the role of co-coaches this season.
"We have great balance," Poirier said of Green. "I don't think we've ever disagreed for more than 20 seconds."
Both agree that Ballage needs to have a more featured role this season. Ballage proved his team worthiness when he scrapped a few summer trips when the coaches were hired to make sure he didn't miss a single workout. And while he appreciates his new coaches' ambitions to get him the ball, he certainly won't be clamoring for it.
"The outlook is just to get wins," Ballage said. "I don't care if they give me 25 carries, 30 carries, 40 carries or if they give me two. It's about winning football games."
Falcon was successful in that regard last year, as it finished 7-4 and earned a No. 12 seed in the 4A playoff bracket. That pitted them against No. 5 Monarch, and they flirted with derailing the Coyotes' title hopes in the first round after leading 14-7 at the half.
Ballage certainly has the football gene is his blood. Keenen Ballage went to Colorado State as a track athlete, but ended up missing football so much that he transferred to Hastings (Neb.) College so he could get back on the field. He led Hastings with 689 rushing yards last season as a senior. He departed with 1,779 career rushing yards and 13 touchdowns.
As Kalen Ballage molds himself into a college-ready athlete, he cherishes the speed/power aspect to his game and doesn't see one dimension as greater than the other.
"Definitely a mix," he said. "I think to be a great athlete and a great football player, you have to have all of those things. I mean, Adrian Peterson, he's not just fast and he's not just strong. He puts them all together when he plays and that's why he's able to do so many things."
Ballage said it was a challenge for he and his teammates to remain solely focused on the game with the chaos surrounding Falcon's coaching situation.
"It definitely was not ideal I guess you could say, but adversity is going to be there for any team," Ballage said. "But I like how it ended up. These are guys who were my coaches way back when and they put you as a student-athlete before anything. They care about you as a person, but they also know football."
They know football, and they know Ballage is a remarkable athlete.
They understand the Falcon uniform is not the final one he'll be wearing in games that matter.
"He's going to go places as long as he stays on the path he's on," Poirier said. "I don't see any reason why he wouldn't."