If an AI program was asked to a create a bio for the ideal Air Force football player and it produced the profile of Blake Fletcher, the program might need to be tweaked to tug it a bit closer toward reality.

It’s just an impossibly complete biography.

Fletcher was the valedictorian of his high school class at William Horlick High School in Racine, Wis. He was also the student government vice president and a member of the National Honor Society.

He was a three-year captain in football, coached by his father. He played quarterback and linebacker for three years, recording 146 tackles as a senior and becoming a three-star recruit – the No. 6 rated recruit in the state according to 247 Sports.

Fletcher also played basketball. And baseball, where he was a pitcher and catcher. And he excelled in track, competing in the bizarrely wide array of shot put, discus, 100 meters and long jump.

Even Air Force coach Troy Calhoun, whose roster is filled with somewhat comparably accomplished young men, finds this background exciting.

“If I didn’t have my rabies shot, yeah, would I be foaming at the mouth a little bit and falling down the front of my shirt? Yeah,” Calhoun said.

That background – and three visits to help him fall in love with the academy and gain an understanding of what a military career would involve – landed Fletcher at Air Force. But how does it propel a player forward once he’s here?

Fletcher has found it working to his advantage in multiple ways.

First, is time management. In high school, he would begin days with 5:30 a.m. workouts and then find gaps in the days to balance the classes and practices that would follow.

On Saturday mornings Fletcher, who has three younger brothers and a younger sister, would stretch and roll out muscles on the sidelines of their football and soccer games as he recovered from his Friday nights.

“I think that definitely helped me transition into the academy and into the rigorous schedule here,” Fletcher said of the workload he took on in high school.

Also, while Fletcher clearly excelled at much in his prep days, he couldn’t possibly be the best at everything. That has helped, too.

“One of things is learning how to be a team player when you’re not necessarily the best in every team in every aspect,” he said. “A lot of guys here were the best players on their football team. When you get here to a Division I program, you have to learn how to become a leader and emerge in that role when you’re not necessarily the best on your team and learn how to lead by example by what you do in practice and in your daily life.”

Calhoun agreed that players who come to the academy with good habits are more likely to make bigger gains in their first couple of years, and that certainly appears to be the case with Fletcher.

His role grew throughout his sophomore year and he averaged more than five tackles per game over the final six contests – including the season-ending four-game winning streak. He had at least one tackle for loss in five of those games, including two in the finale at San Diego State to go with a career-high eight stops.

He returns along with fellow junior Luke Fisher as the front-runners to start at the inside linebacker positions, though several others will provide a challenge at the deep spot.

Calhoun points to Fletcher as the example of why the academies have – and need – athletics.

“There is an attraction for leaders when you have sports that you really can’t duplicate in any other endeavor,” said Calhoun, a 1989 Air Force graduate. “The ceiling for those human beings is enormous because they’ve been in so many situations where they’ve needed an adjustment, or the initial game plan wasn’t exactly perfect, and it’s never going to be. In those moments the intensity and the combativeness and the toughness and the physicality and the unity of pulling together, it’s the greatest part of sports that we want in a leader of character in our Air Force and our Space Force.”