Blakely Cheek enters her second season with Jacksonville and her first as a full-time assistant coach in 2023-24. Cheek spent her first year with the Dolphins as a volunteer assistant. She works with the hitters as well as the infielders.
Coach Cheek’s impact was felt right away as Jacksonville had a 10-win improvement from the 2022 season to 2023 and qualified for the ASUN Conference Tournament. The offense improved as well in 2023 in many areas including runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, RBI, total bases, walks and hit-by-pitches. The team fielding percentage also improved from .939 in 2022 to .957 in 2023. Junior infielder Kari Holzrichter was named First Team All-Conference as a utility player in 2023, her first all-conference honor.
Several hitters came through with career-years under Cheek’s guidance in 2023. Junior infielder Madison Reynolds set career-bests across the board leading the Dolphins hitting .323 with 51 hits, 28 runs scored, 12 doubles (tied for sixth-most single-season program history), 28 RBI, 22 walks, 10 stolen bases, slugged .449 and a .412 on base percentage. Sophomore Tatiana Davis improved her average tremendously while becoming a starter and led the team with four triples, the third-best single-season total in Jacksonville history. Junior Allison Bratek smashed a career-high and team-leading eight home runs (tied for eighth-most single-season in program history) and was second with 27 RBI.
Cheek – formerly Blakely Burch – starred at third base at Marshall University from 2018-21. After initially beginning her collegiate career at USC Upstate (2017), Cheek transferred to the Herd and quickly became a leader. Cheek consistently made great plays from the hot corner and helped lead Marshall to an appearance in the 2019 Conference USA Tournament Championship game. That same season, Cheek ripped off seven triples, ranking sixth in the NCAA, and set the Marshall single-season record. She hit two walk-offs in her career. The first was a 2-run double against Louisiana Tech to take the series at home on Emileigh Cooper Day in 2019, and the second was an RBI single versus East Tennessee State in 2020.
Cheek was honored as the 2021 Warrior Award winner, named in memory of former Herd player Emileigh Cooper, after coming back from a devastating knee injury in 2020 to play again in 2021 while finishing her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Marshall and working toward the accelerated nursing program at Jacksonville. Cheek was a three-time member of the Conference USA Commissioner’s Honor Roll. In her career with the Herd, Cheek appeared in 147 games with 135 starts, had 88 hits, scored 70 runs, 17 doubles, nine triples (fourth all-time at MU), 12 home runs, 27 hit-by-pitches (sixth all-time at MU) and slugged .422.
Cheek graduated from Marshall with a bachelor’s degree in exercise kinesiology in 2020 and a master’s degree in healthcare administration in 2021. She will graduate from the nursing program at Jacksonville in 2024.
Blakely grew up less than 90 minutes away from Jacksonville in Live Oak, Florida, and comes from an athletic family. Her father (David Burch) played college baseball at South Alabama winning the Sun Belt title in 1983 and playing in the NCAA Tournament. He also played professional Slow Pitch softball for 10 years. Her grandfather (Gerald Burch) was a three-time All-SEC receiver and punter at Georgia Tech and then played one year in the American Football League with the Oakland Raiders in 1961.
Blakely is married to Jackson Cheek.
