Central Point’s Blake Eaton joins Medford’s Jaylin Parnell, Robbie Patterson for starring roles in Italian Football League

On one side of the football field stood former Central Point’s Blake Eaton.

On the other, there was Medford’s Jaylin Parnell and Robbie Patterson.

It might not seem all that unusual, except for the fact that the location was Ancona, Italy, and the result equaled a spot in the Italian Football League championship.

Blake Eaton guided the Ancona Dolphins to the championship game of the Italian Football League for the first time in 21 years this past season. (Photo by Germano Capponi)

“That was crazy,” said Eaton, who was quarterback of the Ancona Dolphins against the Parma Panthers team led by Parnell and Patterson. “Growing up with Jaylin where his dad and my dad coached at Crater High School for a long time together, that was fun. Pretty much every play we were just battling each other and it was kind of ‘Let the best man win a little bit,’ so that was really fun.”

The small-world aspect of the situation wasn’t lost on Parnell, either.

“I used to walk Blake and his brother, Brady, to school to Jefferson Elementary,” said Parnell, “so everything was full circle. You grow up with these dudes and now you’re in Italy playing football against each other, it’s crazy. We just flew however far away to still ball and get a chance to play with each other, so that’s pretty cool.”

A far cry from the Rogue Valley, there was still an undeniable Southern Oregon flavor to this past season in the IFL — continuing the local impact on American football overseas that has seen the likes of Medford’s Matt Retzlaff and A.J. Palazzolo, among others, previously set a course of opportunity in Europe.

“There’s been a South Medford connection out there (in Europe) a while already with Matt and A.J. Palazzolo,” Patterson said of his third season of being a foreign import at quarterback. “I always saw them doing the cool stuff out there that they were doing, so I was like, ‘How do I do that?’ That’s kind of how I ended up out there.”

In all accounts, it’s been a successful venture — athletically and culturally.

“For me, it was one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve ever had,” said the 23-year-old Eaton, who made his overseas debut during the spring/summer season in Italy. “Being able to go to another country and play the sport that I’ve grown up playing and love, and then being able to just meet new people and new friends from another country was incredible. I’ve built relationships that I’ll have the rest of my life.”

Robbie Patterson, left, holds up the MVP trophy and Jaylin Parnell, second from right, hoists the championship trophy from the 2024 Italian Bowl. (Photo courtesy Jaylin Parnell)

Parnell was brought over to Italy in 2024 thanks to the recommendation of a former Western Oregon teammate, and when Parma coaches said they needed a quarterback, he was quick to nominate Patterson for the job after his former South Medford teammate had spent the previous year playing in Germany.

“I think it’s one of those once in a lifetime experiences,” said Parnell, “especially if you love football and want to keep playing and continue to some of the higher level leagues in the U.S. It’s a great way to stay in the game and still have that connection of playing ball and hanging out with dudes on the team and the camaraderie and all of that.”

A year ago, it was Patterson earning MVP honors as he passed for 3,850 yards and 36 touchdowns and ran for five more scores to join Parnell, who doubled as a linebacker and running back, in leading Parma to a second straight Italian Bowl title. Three of Patterson’s TD passes came in the championship win over Firenze Guelfi, and Parnell also ran for a score.

This season, Eaton and company proved to be a thorn in the Panthers’ side as he guided Ancona to three wins over Parma — including a 20-14 win at Nelson Mandela Stadium in the semifinal round.

“We couldn’t find a way to beat them,” Parnell said with a laugh. “They beat us three times and knocked us out of the playoffs, too. It was always by one possession or three points or something like that. They just kept getting us, man, we just couldn’t get it done. Blake drove the ball down, I think, on almost every single one of those games and won it in the last drive. He definitely had a great season.”

Patterson ran for a TD and was part of a scoring hookup with Parnell for Parma’s lone scores, but Eaton was able to drive Ancona down to score after each TD and ultimately to victory with a final tally in the fourth quarter that put the Dolphins in the IFL championship for the first time since 2004.

Medford’s Robbie Patterson played in Germany before guiding the Parma Panthers the past two seasons in Italy. (Photo by Valentina Gianferrari)

In the 44th Italian Bowl — played in Toledo, Ohio, this year for only the second IFL final in the United States — Firenze Guelfi flexed its might with a 49-14 win over Ancona to finish undefeated.

Still, the Ancona mood after the semifinals and in anticipation of the finals provided a lasting memory for Eaton.

“I think the biggest moment for me that I saw from the guys was when we had finally won the semifinal game at home against Parma and that was kind of their ticket to go into the U.S. and play in the championship,” said Eaton, who played collegiately at Linfield. “The guys were just dropping to their knees crying because a lot of them had never been in the U.S. before and they hadn’t won a semifinal playoff game in 21 years, so it was a big deal for them and a big spot in history for the team, for sure.”

A lot of that emotion was easy to understand given how much the Italians put into American football, which really is more of a passion project than financial pursuit.

“They all care about football a lot, and a lot of them work jobs on top of playing football,” said Parnell. “We’d practice at 8:30 at night and a lot of those dudes would travel from an hour or two away just to be on the team and just play. Honestly, their love for the game was the most surprising thing I learned being in Italy.”

It was the same for Patterson, who saw more competitive football play in Germany — closer to the skill level in the states — but found the overall football and cultural experience in Italy to be more fun.

“It’s definitely a different experience just based on the fact that it’s not their main sport,” Patterson said of playing in Europe. “They all grew up wanting to be soccer players and not football players, so you kind of find an interesting group of guys that like football or find football for some reason — whether it was like their parents loved the NFL or played football growing up or they came to the states and did a semester abroad.”

“You just find so many different people who found the sport kind of in a different way than we did out in the states,” he added, “so you end up with a pretty cool culture of guys who just really, really love the sport for what it is and do it just because it’s fun for them. There’s definitely some opportunity for them to make money in Europe playing football, but it’s not much, it’s just enough to support yourself and buy some food and just keep playing a little bit longer, so they definitely do it for the love of the game.”

Medford’s Jaylin Parnell returned to playing both sides of the line of scrimmage as a running back and linebacker for the Parma Panthers. (Photo by Giulio Busi)

The willingness of their teammates to immerse the American players in their culture and their activities was something all three local players raved about.

“We were kind of a team in a smaller town so a lot of the guys on the team had grown up playing football together for their whole entire lives because it’s such a small niche in Italy,” said Eaton. “They were just a super tight group. Me and the other American, Tyler Terhark, once we got there, there was like 10 or 15 guys at the house we were staying at just already introducing themselves and asking us if we want to go do anything fun. They were just taking care of us, and we felt like we were part of that family from Day 1.”

The group was so close, it made the game-day results secondary to the experience for Eaton.

“We were blessed to have a really good team this year,” he said. “It wasn’t just me and the other American on our team making plays, there were a bunch of guys just flying around doing good stuff. But if I had that close of a team and we were on a losing season team, I would still have had just as much fun. It was a great experience.”

Eaton said he owes it all to a random reaching out effort on Instagram by Ancona offensive coordinator Loris Aquinati after a request by head coach Rik Parker, who had seen Eaton’s highlights on Instagram from his playing days at Linfield.

“It was really an exciting decision, for sure,” said Eaton. “I got the direct message Jan. 1 and then I was in Italy Jan. 14. It was a quick decision. I took a couple days to think about it, and I kind of just thought when am I going to get this opportunity ever again, so I just decided to do it.”

He also reached out to Parnell about his experience playing in Italy.

“I had seen a lot of his stuff on Instagram about it and it looked like he was having a great time,” said Eaton, “so I kind of just decided to say yes to it and I’m not going to regret going there. I would regret saying no, I think, if I ended up going that way. I just had to go.”

Beyond the culture shock anyone would have with such a venture, each player also had to rein in their on-field expectations.

“They’re there really just to have fun, so it’s not as serious for some of them,” said Eaton. “The first week or two it was a little bit of an adjustment trying to just enjoy being there instead of really trying to get the guys to run the right routes or run the right play, if that makes sense.”

“For me it was really hard to read coverages there because there would be a lot of guys in the wrong spots,” he added. “If you were getting a two-high, cover-two shell, sometimes the safety wouldn’t be in his half and it was a little confusing, so that was the main difference. You’re like, ‘You’re supposed to be my read and you are not where you’re supposed to be, so what is going on?”

Patterson agreed, noting the discrepancy between having imported players who competed in the SEC in a league that also has players who have hardly touched a football in their life and don’t have that natural grasp of concepts an American player may take for granted.

“Dealing with the discrepancy of talent is definitely an interesting thing that you just don’t have to deal with here, so it was definitely a big learning curve,” said Patterson. “But you realize that those guys do want to learn and get better and they realize that you’ve played for so long and have so much knowledge that you can share with them, so the guys that want to get better will ask so many questions. I thought that was really cool for guys who want to take their game to the next level to take interest and really take advantage of the knowledge that some of the American coaches and players bring out there.”

Even if the unpredictability of what the Italians might do on the field led to Patterson harkening back to his younger days.

“It makes it a fun game sometimes because you just have to rely on gut feel and instincts almost and go back to the Pop Warner days,” he said.

Patterson also enjoyed being able to team up with Parnell in the backfield again after last playing together on South Medford’s Class 6A state runner-up team in 2017. Parnell was initially recruited to Parma solely as a linebacker, but after Patterson arrived, things changed.

“I never told them I played running back in high school,” said Parnell. “The reason I started playing running back is because Robbie was like, ‘You know Jaylin played running back in high school.’ The next thing you know, they’re handing me the ball off and I got to play both ways again, so that was pretty cool.”

“Robbie was my biggest hype man,” he added, “and it was really cool to be back in the backfield with him. It was one of those things where we didn’t even need to practice mesh or anything. The handoffs were crisp and everything, it was just like back to high school.”

Parnell, who is currently helping coach up South Medford’s football team, plans to head back to Italy to coach Parma’s under-18 football team at the end of October. He also intends to return in the spring to play again for the senior team.

Patterson has taken up the high school coaching reins in Denver as a result of a connection he made while playing football in Germany. He’s serving as a receivers coach while also working with a startup group focusing on football software, and said a focus on having a little more stability and consistency in his life means his playing days are over.

Eaton is working with the running backs at Southern Oregon University, where his brother Brady is a defensive back and there are several ties to the Crater program, including head coach Berk Brown. He’s entertaining the idea of returning to Europe to play football, but nothing is set in stone.

“It’s a different lifestyle, so we’ll see,” said Eaton. “I can’t say enough good things about my experience.”

Reach sports editor Kris Henry at kris.henry@rv-times.com or 458-488-2035