When Snook Christian opens its 2026 football season Friday against Collegiate Christian in Gulfport, Mississippi, senior Dallion Blake knows his mother will bring two chairs to the stands. One of them will stay empty.
Blake’s father, George Clinton Blake III — known to friends and family simply as “Three” — died Feb. 1 after a long fight with lung cancer. He was 61.
“He meant everything to me,” Dallion, 17, said. “I would guess as a father you would want your child to be a better man than you were. For me, I just want to be half as good as my dad was.”
Dallion describes his father as a tough, larger-than-life figure who spent more than four decades racing funny cars and dragsters across Mississippi before the family moved to Orange Beach. Dallion attended Orange Beach schools from third grade through his sophomore year before transferring to Snook Christian in Foley.
“I didn’t like the environment I was in at the time,” Dallion said. “I still have friends from Orange Beach that I still talk to. Most of them are playing college football right now. I got involved in the Summerdale Church of Christ. I always had been big in church but had never been as involved as I became. I made the decision to move to Snook, and it was probably the best decision I could have made.”
As a junior, Dallion helped lead the young Eagles program while it still played 8-man football, finishing as the team’s second-leading tackler with 46 stops, adding 2.5 sacks, two forced turnovers and an interception at linebacker. On offense at tailback, he rushed for 328 yards on 72 carries and caught 16 passes for 221 yards. This fall, Snook Christian moves back to 11-man football and, for the first time, will compete in the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s Single-A Private division.
“Dallion is a very hard worker,” Snook coach Keith Smith said. “He pushes himself hard. He’s a great leader. He’s someone the younger kids really look up to and respect. Coming from Orange Beach, he understands what football is supposed to look like and be like. He’s a coach on the field. He’s very patient, very intelligent. He really sees things well.”
A father’s struggle
Dallion said his father first noticed lower abdomen pain in the fall of 2023 but resisted seeing a doctor. “I told him then, ‘Dad, most people go to the doctor when they are hurting,’” Dallion recalled. “My dad said, ‘Yeah, those people are soft.’ He put it off.”
That Thanksgiving, “Three” had to get up from the family dinner table. “As soon as he walked away, I knew he was hurting,” Dallion said. “I got up and walked over there and said, ‘Dad, either you come in here and tell them or I will. You can be mad at me later.’ I calmed him down a little bit. He was scared because he knew where this was leading.”
Though barely a teenager when his father’s illness began, Dallion said he tried to take control from the start. “I grew up hanging out with older people and adults,” he said. “I tried to be very mature in certain situations. I have been put in some situations that have shaped me into the man I am today. Tough situations. I knew this was serious. I thought that if I were serious for dad then everyone else would be serious as well.”
Dallion eventually convinced his father to go to an urgent care clinic and drove him there himself. “When I saw him walking out, he had his hands over his eyes,” Dallion said. “I knew he was crying. He wouldn’t say anything. They said he had a collapsed lung and had to go to the ER. When we got there and he got out of the car, he just grabbed me and gave me a hug and started bawling. I had to flip a switch and be strong so he could just worry about his health. I called everyone I knew.”
Doctors drained roughly 2,200 CCs of fluid from his father’s lungs that night and sent it for testing.
The diagnosis
The results were grim. “It was Stage 4 lung cancer,” Dallion said.
The family turned to Southern Cancer Center in Daphne, where doctors started “Three” on a chemotherapy pill. “They told us then it wasn’t curable, but it was treatable,” Dallion said. “For the next year or so, everything seemed fine.”
The cancer eventually began to grow again, and late in 2024 “Three” was referred to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for a clinical trial. “There were 64 patients trying to get into that trial, and Dad was one of only three to get in,” Dallion said. “But it was probably the worst thing for him. He threw up every day. He eventually fell before the threshold of weight he needed to be to be a part of the trial. I think he got down to 150 pounds or so.”
Regular chemotherapy followed, but the cancer spread to his kidneys and ribs. The day after Christmas in 2025, a return visit to M.D. Anderson revealed it had reached his brain as well. “It was now terminal,” Dallion said.
“Three” grew sicker in the days that followed and was eventually rushed to the emergency room at South Baldwin Hospital. “Dad didn’t like being embarrassed. Ever,” Dallion said. “There he was in the lobby of the hospital throwing up blood in a trash can. My preacher came and was sitting in the lobby talking to me. All of a sudden, dad said, ‘I want to be baptized. I want to make sure it’s right.’”
On Jan. 21, 2026, that same day, “Three” Blake was baptized. “When he came out of that water, there were rays of sunshine coming up,” Dallion said. “He was so happy. He grabbed me, hugged me, hugged the preacher. He was crying the whole way back home. I think the realization hit him, ‘It’s going to be OK because I know where I’m going.’”
Dallion stayed by his father’s side through the final 11 days. “I sat with him for hours and hours,” he said. “I would bring some of my friends in to see him. Watching it break my friends broke me.”
Moving forward
Dallion spoke at his father’s funeral, where most of his Snook Christian teammates showed up to support him. “Everyone’s heart went out to him,” Smith said. “At the funeral, there might have been one or two players missing. The kids were very supportive, and we as coaches and teachers have worked with him.”
Dallion said he plans to play with even more intensity this season. “I’m going to miss the talks before the game, but I still have voice messages from my dad I can listen to,” he said. “Obviously, the hardest game will be Senior Night, but I’m not going to let adversity take me down.”
Dallion hopes to play both football and baseball in college, and he says his father will be with him every step of the way. “I watched him struggle for years,” he said. “I’m grateful to know he is in heaven now burning rubber. He started a legacy. Someone was meant to fill that legacy, and that someone is me. Whether that is football or racing or whatever, I’ll make him proud.”
A season played with an empty chair
Snook Christian’s move to 11-man football and the AHSAA Single-A Private division is the competitive backdrop to Dallion Blake’s senior year, but the emotional backdrop is the empty chair his mother will leave in the stands. Blake’s father, “Three,” died Feb. 1 after a long fight with lung cancer, and the senior has said he plans to play with more intensity in his father’s memory — carrying voice messages from “Three” as a pregame ritual. For a small program like Snook Christian in Foley, where teammates showed up nearly in full at the funeral, that grief is shared, and the empty chair is the symbol of a season played for someone who cannot watch.
From drag strips to the Eastern Shore
The Blake story spans two worlds: “Three” spent more than four decades racing funny cars and dragsters across Mississippi, a larger-than-life figure in the racing community, before the family moved to Orange Beach. Dallion attended Orange Beach schools through his sophomore year, played against kids now in college football, and found his way to Snook Christian after a move he calls the best decision he made — deeper church involvement at Summerdale Church of Christ and a football program where he became a leader. His father’s legacy, in Dallion’s words, was “started” by “Three” and is now his to fill, “whether that is football or racing or whatever.” The throughline is a son determined to honor a tough, stubborn, loving father.
The maturity of a teenager under pressure
What stands out in Blake’s account is how young he was when the illness began — barely a teenager — and how he took charge: pushing his father to the doctor, driving him to urgent care, flipping a switch to be strong so “Three” could focus on his health. The detail of draining 2,200 CCs of fluid from his father’s lungs, the Stage 4 diagnosis, the clinical trial at M.D. Anderson that only three of 64 patients qualified for, the eventual spread to kidneys, ribs and brain — these are the medical beats of a family’s hardest year, recounted by a son who stayed for the final 11 days. His father’s baptism on Jan. 21, 2026, “rays of sunshine coming up” as he came out of the water, is the moment Blake returns to as the peace that closed the story.
What comes next for Dallion
Blake hopes to play football and baseball in college, and he carries his father with him in the goal. A second-leading tackler as a junior in 8-man ball — 46 stops, 2.5 sacks, two forced turnovers, an interception, plus 328 rushing yards — he now steps into 11-man competition as a leader Coach Keith Smith calls “a coach on the field.” The Senior Night game will be the hardest, he says, but adversity will not take him down. For Snook Christian, a program still building, a senior who has already faced far worse than a tough opponent is exactly the player a young team rallies around, and the empty chair will be the quiet presence behind every snap he takes.
