In 2016, Blake Peters was riding piggyback on Myles Betts as Choctaw celebrated a district championship.

• Ten years and 10 innings later, Betts was back at Choctaw, this time to watch Peters and his teammates clutch a district title of their own.

For a senior whose family has been stitched into Choctaw for decades, it was the kind of moment you can’t script.

“Bloodline’s a big thing,” Peters said. “I bleed green from head to toe.”

Peters grew up right behind the school. His dad, Jeff, was a football star there. His mom, Heather, went there. His brother, Brady, played there. His sister, Brooklyn, teaches there now — and was actually his physics teacher.

Long before he ever pulled the big green over his head, Peters was a kid walking over from the house behind Choctaw to watch baseball with his family. Betts, who Peters has called one of his earliest favorites, was one of the players he came to watch.

• So when Peters launched the first home run of his career over the fence against Baker County in the Sweet 16 last week, it carried more than runs. It carried a lifetime of days in the stands.

“I thought it was going to hit off the top of the fence,” Peters said. “But I saw it go over and then was just hit with a bunch of emotions all at the same time. It was just super surreal.”

Peters finished the night 3-for-3 with three RBIs in the Indians’ 9-0 win, helping push Choctaw into a regional semifinal matchup with St. Augustine.

The home run was a milestone, but it was hardly the only big moment Peters has stacked in recent weeks. In the district championship win over Escambia — a 9-8 thriller in 10 innings — Peters reached on an error in the 10th, helping kick off the rally that ended in Jack Marracco’s walk-off double. Peters came around to score the winning run, despite playing through a quad injury he’s been managing all year.

• “No matter what sign Coach gave, if he put a green light or a red light, I was going regardless,” Peters said. “I’m not gonna lie.”

Choctaw Head Coach David Weber, who played baseball at Choctaw himself and has known the Peters family since back when Blake’s dad helped at the program’s youth camps, said that drive is exactly what makes Peters special.

“He’s no doubt a 100% kind of guy,” Weber said. “He’d run through a brick wall for the program. I’ve seen him run into the wall full speed this year on a ball that was 15 feet over the fence. He slammed into the wall, full speed. That’s just who he is. He puts it all on the line for the brotherhood.”

Brotherhood is a word Peters keeps coming back to as well. He pointed to the chemistry inside the Indians’ clubhouse — the daily ping-pong games before practice, the team-building exercises, the fact that this group has been playing together since June without a real break — as the reason Choctaw is 23-5 and just claimed its first district title in a decade.

“We love playing with each other on the field,” Peters said. “We’re going to come out with a win this week for sure.”

Off the field, Peters carries the same all-in approach. He’s a National Honor Society member, part of Link Crew, a Choctaw spirit boy this year, and at church every Sunday with his grandparents. He plans to attend the University of West Florida in the fall to study construction management, a path that started with his Uncle Greg Rynearson’s construction class at Pryor Middle School and stuck.

Ask him what part of his game he’s most proud of, and he doesn’t talk about hitting. He talks about chasing baseballs to the fence.

• “Defensively, I just go. I love running after it at the fence and it’s going to get caught,” Peters said.

It is, in some ways, the perfect description of Blake Peters’ Choctaw experience. He’s been chasing this — the uniform, the moments, the brotherhood — since he was a kid in his backyard.

For Weber, watching Peters round the bases on that first career home run was about a lot more than baseball.

“Sometimes, it’s not really about ball, it’s about life,” Weber said. “If Blake continues to take the things that he does for this place, for the brotherhood — if he continues to do that, he takes that into life — he’s going to be very successful in whatever he chooses to do.”