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Blake Caldwell had a dream of playing professional baseball.

Upon discovering at a young age the probability of achieving his goal was extremely low, he amended his wish to a more achievable one: playing at the collegiate level.

According to the NCAA, of the 482,740 reported high school baseball players for the 2018-19 season, only 36,011 (7.3%) went on to play in college. (The 2018-19 numbers are the most recently available from the National Federation of State High School Associations, the nationwide governing body of high school athletes.)

That same year was when Caldwell, then a Jay County High School sophomore, saw his plans of playing in college fade away.

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As an eighth grader on the football team at East Jay Middle School, Caldwell suffered a broken leg in a game against South Adams. While attempting to down an onside kick, he got hit and fell back awkwardly, snapping a portion of his tibia.

Once the injury healed and after he was perhaps cleared to play a little too soon, Caldwell joined the Chiefs’ basketball team that winter. During a game, he dived in an attempt to stop a ball from going out of bounds. His body contorted as he hit the floor, and when he got up he was unable to fully extend his right leg.

“I played three games like that,” he said.

The pain, which turned out to be in his lower back, lingered far beyond basketball season.

“We watched him go through it for two years and didn’t realize what it was,” said Tyler Caldwell, Blake’s father. “He kept saying, ‘My back is tight.’”

Chalking it up to growing pains, Tyler and Blake’s mother, Kristi Sibray, tried their best to help their eldest son manage the pain with stretches and frequent visits to the chiropractor.

Concussions as a freshman cut Blake’s football career short, so he instead focused on baseball in spite of his back discomfort.

“I just told myself I was being a baby,” he said. “I changed my swing freshman year. Went through freshman football, never ran into an accident (with my back). It would hurt, but it wasn’t shocking until I went to go get it looked at.”

It took a swing during a fall baseball workout to floor him. The violent twisting action shot pain through his body and dropped him to a knee. He wasn’t able to fight through it, and that’s when his parents were advised it wasn’t just muscle soreness.

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While the exact cause — whether the hit on the football field or diving for a basketball — is uncertain, the diagnosis was straightforward: pars interarticularis defect, or pars defect, in his L5 vertebrae in the lower back.

Layman’s terms: a broken vertebrae.

Caldwell had three options to remedy the fracture; he could wear a back brace for four to five months with no guarantee of a fix, he could have surgery to put a rod and screws in the vertebrae or have surgery to fuse the spine. The last of those options would limit his range of motion and make playing baseball difficult.

“I remember we were walking out (of the hospital), we both looked at him and said, ’You don’t have to play baseball. You can have a good life,’” Tyler said. “He said, ‘What kind of life is that?’

“His mind was made up three steps outside the doctor’s office that he was going to have surgery.”

Blake said he didn’t feel comfortable with the first option because it meant he still might miss time if his bone didn’t heal with the brace alone. And the fusion was out of the question because baseball was his passion.

“Took us a little bit longer to be OK with (the surgery),” Sibray said. “We wanted him to be happy and do it, but then again you don’t want your baby going under the knife.”

Tyler added: “Anytime you have a 15-, 16-year-old son who’s looking at back surgery, it scares the life out of you.”

So the day after Christmas in 2018, Blake was the recipient of a rod and four screws in his lower back to repair the vertebrae.

It was a small step forward, yes, but the road to playing beyond high school became that much longer.

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At the time of his surgery, Blake weighed 184 pounds.

He was forced to wear a back brace for four months and complete rehab before he could even think about playing baseball again.

The rehab, he said, wasn’t even the most difficult part. It was “coming to the baseball field every day when I couldn’t play,” he said.

He was forced to miss his entire sophomore season, one in which he expected to make the varsity team.

Because he was unable to work out, he put on weight. By the time he was done with rehab, he had shot up to 234 pounds.

“It was tough,” he said. “I saw my body deteriorating and I just couldn’t do anything about it.”

To make matters worse, he was unable to contribute on the field as the Patriots won back-to-back sectional championships and advanced to the regional final.

Sibray said the most difficult part after Blake’s surgery was watching him struggle. Tyler Caldwell added he was fearful for his son.

“I watched him go from not being able to really walk after surgery … to see him go through the depression of going six or seventh months of him not being able to do what he loves,” he said. “(I had) the fear of him having to do it again.”

But Blake had a goal he wanted to reach. He lifted weights up to five days a week. He started going to baseball workouts at The Barn Academy in Muncie.

Then his junior season was canceled because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Kind of grateful for it,” he said. “It gave me time to get ready for my travel ball season. But that year I was still heavier than I am now [190 pounds]. I definitely wasn’t as strong as I am now.

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Last fall, Blake returned to the baseball diamond as a member of the Indiana Prospects, an organization he had been a member of since he was 14.

“I was in tears,” Sibray said, noting she had Blake’s surgeon on call in case something went wrong.

In his first game back, the Prospects got no-hit. In his second, he ripped two balls to deep center field that dropped for doubles.

In 28 games for the Prospects, Blake hit .324 with a team-best 10 doubles. He also had a triple and 17 RBIs.

Then his dream came true.

On Jan. 19, two years after back surgery and without a high school game under his belt, Blake Caldwell signed to play baseball for Wabash College.

“It means a lot,” he said. “As a little kid it was always my goal. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get it again.

“They told me they weren’t sure if I would be able to swing a bat or play baseball without pain again … I am beyond thrilled, blessed, everything, to be able to play.”

So how does a kid with no high school experience sign to play in college?

Tyler said it’s his son’s work ethic that allowed him to get the opportunity to achieve his goal.

“When he was little the biggest thing we taught him was the only thing you can control is the effort you put into it and he has figured that part out,” he said. “He has worked his butt off.”

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Before Blake realizes his dream at Wabash, he’ll finally get his chance to represent Jay County at Don E. Selvey Field when the Patriots open their season Thursday against Elwood.

“He’s kind of a quiet leader for us,” JCHS coach Lea Selvey said. “We’re counting on him.”

Caldwell will be moving to first base from third, and Selvey said he’ll be relying on his bat in the lineup as one of the team’s four seniors.

“The thing I admire him the most for is he found a way,” Selvey said. “His goal was to play in college and he just kept finding a way to get work done, get rehab done.”

But, as Tyler said, his son’s drive to succeed — they both admit Blake often puts too much pressure on himself — isn’t the only factor in landing a spot with the Wabash Little Giants.

“That mountain was too high to climb by ourselves,” he said. “There was no possible way. Everything fell in place for him to come back.”