Washington hit a homerun by hiring Jon Blank as its next head football coach. Blank has been in the Pam Pack fold since arriving in 2002 as a junior varsity offensive line coach. Since then, he’s held the same role at the varsity level, served as a special teams coach, and has been its defensive coordinator for 11 years.

Blank understands the x’s and o’s of the game, especially on defense. Offensively, he’s learned a lot under Sport Sawyer and said he looks forward to exploring options regarding an offensive coordinator.

That’s not the most pivotal part of this decision, though. In hiring Blank, Washington knows it has someone motivated to do everything on and off the field that will take the Pam Pack beyond the heights it reached in the recent past.

“We got pushed around some this season. There’s only one time you can start fixing that, and that’s immediately,” Blank said of Washington’s 3-8 season.

Blank and the rest of the remaining coaching staff showed exactly how committed they are to the success of the football team. It wasn’t long after the season ended, and Sawyer resigned, that Blank took the initiative to implement a regimented offseason workout plan. It will contribute to the team’s success come August. More importantly, though, it’s about building a culture within Washington’s athletic programs.

There’s already been a culture of success. However, things have fallen off since the Pam Pack reached the 2-A state championship in 2014. Washington was decisively eliminated in the first round of the 2015 playoffs, and all but imploded this past season.

There will be changes moving forward, but there will also be a sense of continuity in terms of all that has made Washington so successful in the last decade.

“One thing that people may sometimes fail to realize is this decade has probably been the most successful decade of Pam Pack football ever,” Blank said. “I think when you look at the coaches we’re going to keep on staff, we can continue some of that tradition.

“There will be changes, but some of the core beliefs of the program are going to remain intact because our work ethic in the offseason is going to continue. Our demands, our accountability and requiring kids to be dependable — those things are not going to change.”

Carrying over ideals like that from one coach to another can be challenging. It’s much easier to achieve with the continuity that’s derived from hiring internally like Washington did with Blank, and is only compounded with keeping much of the staff the same.

Blank also brings experience and a mindset that has helped Washington athletics become so successful across the board. Soccer, softball, swimming and other sports have competed for titles, while the other programs have shown signs of vast improvement.

“There is a correlation with other sports and football,” Blank said. “When basketball is winning, football is usually winning. When track is successful, football is usually successful. When all of your kids are lifting weights and running hard in the offseason, your teams are going to be successful.

“There’s a benefit to every sport out here if we can get all the kids working hard.”

Blank has played a role in the great success Washington has seen over the past 14 years. His tenure as head football coach isn’t even two days old, but already there’s a palpable degree of optimism for the future.