By Dave Krider
MaxPreps.com
Josh Jenkins dearly loves pancakes – but not the kind you eat.
The 6-foot-4, 305-pound senior offensive tackle may have set a national record (no records are kept for this category) last fall when he recorded a staggering 158 pancake blocks while sparking Parkersburg (13-1) to its second consecutive West Virginia Class AAA state championship.
In football terms, a pancake is a block so powerful that it puts an opposing lineman completely on his back. If any part of his uniform number was showing, however, assistant coach Mark McCullough downgraded the block to a “waffle.” The first-team MaxPreps All-America selection had 12 waffles as a senior and he didn’t like any of them.
“Me and him got into it a few times,” Jenkins said good naturedly of the 12 jarring blocks which were not designated as pancakes.
Jenkins’ pancake record was 29 against Morgantown University High. He also had 18 in one half of a game after his brother, Paul, bet him $5 he couldn’t get 16. His blocking grade was an outstanding 98.5 percent. On defense he made 59 solo and 33 assisted tackles, five tackles for losses and caused two fumbles.
McCullough praised, “He had a phenomenal year. He just destroyed people and wasn’t challenged. His feet are amazing. He wants to bury the guy. He makes it a game in a game. He gets to the second and third level (linebackers and safeties), because he’s so doggone quick. They would find out where he was and run the other way. I don’t blame them. He can be a linebacker’s worst nightmare. Some kids absolutely hate him.”
Head coach Bernie Buttrey says flat out, “He’s by far the best high school lineman I’ve ever seen. He is a great combination of size, strength and speed. It’s hard to compare him to anybody. His athleticism sets him apart. There aren’t many who weigh 300 pounds and are as athletic as he is. His first step is as good as any I’ve ever seen. The thing people miss is how aggressive he is. He wants to finish every play. He gets on people and stays on people.”
Jenkins runs 40 yards in a fine 5.2 seconds, bench presses 370 pounds and has a 29-inch vertical jump.
In honor of Jenkins’ special “art,” offensive coordinator Don Reeves placed an unopened box of pancake mix on top of his locker. It rests there – rather majestically – day after day as a tribute to the “Pancake Kid.”
Naturally, the big guy takes great pride in his pancakes. He explained, “I’ll get a pancake if I do my job and get through the line – which is most important – but if I can, I’ll take a chance and finish the guy off. If the linebacker falls, I’m going to jump on top of him, probably. Linebackers hate to get hit.”
Dominating players on the other side of the line is a major mental, as well as physical, game to Jenkins. After he deals out great physical punishment early in the game, his opponents “don’t want to be there and start taking plays off. That’s when you start taking advantage of them. If you keep playing to the whistle, that’s when you’re going to be smacking people.”
Referees long ago took note of Jenkins’ relentless aggressiveness. Asked if they warned him very often, he replied, “Every game. Yeah. If I blocked too long they were going to flag me. I got flagged once. I had pancaked a kid and he was about to get back up, so I jumped on him.”
Of course, 300-pound linemen do have a weakness – their legs. Jenkins recalled a nightmarish game against Ripley. “They were just chopping my knees,” he explained. “I was trying to jump over the line of scrimmage. A lot of teams did it, but they did it on every play. I maybe had 10 pancakes.”
Oh, yes, we can’t forget Josh’s touchdown! Buttrey noted, “He bugged me for years to hand him the football. We were up, 21-0, in the second quarter against our biggest rival, Parkersburg South, so we gave him the ball and allowed him to score a touchdown. He came up, hugged me and thanked me.”
Jenkins carried for five yards, then the final three to paydirt. “It was a cool feeling,” he related. “I was just happy he let me touch the ball.”
His ultra-aggressiveness really comes naturally, because Josh has three football-playing brothers. Billy (6-1, 225) played linebacker at Ohio University. Paul (6-3, 315) is a senior lineman at Ohio University. Justin (6-2, 260) is a freshman at Parkersburg and some folks predict he may be even better than Josh – a shuddering thought for future opponents of the Big Reds. Their family games must have been pure murder!
“My brothers always told me that you’ve got to be aggressive,” Jenkins related. “You’ve got to learn to be tough. You either have it, or you don’t. You can’t just flip that switch.”
Surprisingly, Jenkins was not into football as a youngster. He played basketball from third through 10th grade, even participating in AAU action during the summer. “In seventh grade, my dream was to play in the McDonald’s All-American Game,” he pointed out. He was talented enough to average 15 points and 10 rebounds as a sophomore.
Still, he drifted into football as a seventh grader, because “all my friends were playing. I hated it until the ninth grade.”
He got his first pancake in seventh grade. “I liked punishing people,” he admitted. “Back then I didn’t really know. I thought they were just falling down.
“In seventh and eighth grade I was awful, but I started because I was big. My junior high coach always told me, ‘Josh, you need to play hard on every play.’ It all clicked in ninth grade and I just started taking pride in everything I did. I started to realize what I could do in the future. I knew my career was going to be in football, not basketball. In tenth grade I decided I was going to start dominating people.”
Jenkins received his biggest thrill when he played in the U.S. Army Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. Though he managed just two pancakes, he says proudly, “Being in the atmosphere of great players, you had to push the gas pedal harder.”
His toughest opponent? He quickly cited MaxPreps first-team All-America defensive tackle Marcus Fortson of national powerhouse Miami (Fla.) Northwestern. “He got me a few times and I got him a few times,” he said.
Amazingly, Jenkins has a much different personality off the field. He describes himself as “laid back. I like to chill. I am completely opposite.”
The Parkersburg superstar takes his role-model status seriously. “I feel good,” he said, “because when I was little, I used to look up to the top football players.” He speaks to local elementary and junior high athletes about the dangers of drugs and stresses their need to work hard and dedicate themselves. He also umpires summer baseball games.
Jenkins, who has a 3.0 GPA, will make one of the biggest decisions of his life on Feb. 6 when he chooses between Ohio State, Florida State, West Virginia and Michigan. He definitely hopes for an NFL career someday, but if that doesn’t materialize, he probably will become a teacher and coach at the high school level.
“Of course, it’s going to be a lot tougher,” he said of the next level. “Everyone is going to be the same size and strength. It’s going to be who plays to the whistle. That’s going to be when you get your pancakes.”
What must he do to keep improving? His reply: “I have to get faster and quicker…and try to get meaner.”
