Meet our Honoree

Upper Arlington Crew Mobile Logo

The Official Home of Upper Arlington high School Rowing

Meet our Honoree

Blake Haxton was a rower on the UA Crew team from the fall of 2005 through the spring of 2009 and was the boys’ captain from 2007 – 2009. In 2009, as he was getting ready to graduate, Haxton lost his legs, and nearly his life, to a rare, flesh-eating bacteria.

Today, after enduring 20 surgeries, rigorous physical therapy and committing to intense training, Haxton is once again a champion rower. In 2014 Blake returned to the sport he loves through adaptive rowing. Blake won the 2014 Men’s Para Indoor Championship setting an American record. He finished first in the arms and shoulders single sculls at the 2014 Para-Rowing World Championships Trials, which qualified him for the 2014 World Rowing Championships where he took fourth. Blake went on to the 2015 World Rowing Championships in Aiguebelette, France, representing the United States where he placed fifth in the world. That performance secured an entry for the United States for the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro where Blake finished fourth in the world. He is also the recipient of the 2016 US Rowing Athlete of the Year award.

In 2016 Blake graduated with a law degree from the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.

Blake’s impressive competitive spirit continues to earn him a place among the rowing elite as a competitor in both the World Para-Rowing Championships,  the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and placed 4th in his division in the 2018 World Rowing Championships in Bulgaria.   Blake recently participated in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  He is the first Team USA athlete to participate in two Olympic sports: Men's Arms and Shoulders single scull where he placed 10th overall and in the Men's Canoe Sprint earning the Silver Medal for Team USA.
 


View text-based website