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K Devin Barclay (Official Thread)

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OSU's Barclay is no longer kicking in obscurity
By Todd Porter
CantonRep.com staff writer
Posted Nov 18, 2009

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AP / Amy Sancetta
Ohio State kicker Devin Barclay celebrates after his field goal in overtime beat Iowa 27-24.

COLUMBUS ?

On his way off the field, the only player without a name on his jersey was the hero. Fitting, given that some of his Buckeye teammates estimate 50 players in the locker room didn?t know who Devin Barclay even was.

An overtime win against Iowa and a trip to the Rose Bowl both rested on the inexperienced and unknown right leg of Barclay, a walk-on kicker. Head Coach Jim Tressel said he had confidence that Barclay could make the 39-yard field goal, but Tressel was making plans for a second overtime, not a celebration.

?I?ll guarantee you there were 50 players on our team who

didn?t know who Barclay was before (Aaron) Pettrey?s injury,? offensive lineman Jim Cordle said. ?Heck, I?ll bet there were some guys on our team who figured that was Pettrey out there in overtime.

?I?d gone on some community outreaches with (Barclay). ... Everybody knows who he is now.?

Barclay?s overtime kick gave Ohio State no worse than a share of the Big Ten title. It also removed Barclay, a 26-year-old former Major League Soccer player, from anonymity. Barclay was thrust into the kicking role after a season-ending injury to Pettrey against Penn State.

Since hitting the kick and being mobbed by Buckeye fans on the field, Barclay has left obscurity behind. He took a long, winding road to Ohio State.

?It?s a crazy, crazy path,? said Barclay, who joined the MLS out of high school. ?There were so many roads I took to get here. I had to kind of re-learn everything since I had been out of school for so long. I had to take the ACTs, and go to a branch campus to get a GPA. When I think back to four years ago and to now, I could have never imagined this.?

What happened to the nameplate on the back of his jersey? Barclay had worn No. 12 and recently changed to No. 23. OSU equipment managers forgot to bring his No. 23 jersey to Ohio Stadium on Saturday.

?They had to take my name off No. 12 and sew a new on No. 23,? Barclay said. ?You could tell my name was kind of sketchily sewn on there. It was kind of flapping off anyways so it?s not a surprise that somebody ripped it off.?
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OSU's Barclay is no longer kicking in obscurity - Canton, OH - CantonRep.com
 
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OSU kicker discovered his skills in Shelby
BY JON SPENCER ? CentralOhio.com ? November 19, 2009

SHELBY -- It's a long, twisting and sometimes unpaved road that has led Ohio State back to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 13 years. Who knew it would go through Shelby?

Devin Barclay never saw that detour on his internal GPS.

"It's crazy," said Barclay, a 26-year-old walk-on kicker for the Buckeyes and erstwhile professional soccer player. "A crazy path."

It was Barclay's 39-yard field goal in overtime Saturday against Iowa that delivered him from college football obscurity and the Buckeyes to Pasadena. To think that seed for success was planted a few years ago in Terri and Denny Hummel's front yard in Shelby blows his mind.

Theirs, too.

"It was nerve-wracking being there, watching that (Iowa) game," said Denny Hummel, whose son, Garrett, is a third-year walk-on receiver for the Buckeyes. "It's hard to believe looking back at that day we took him out in the front yard on a whim."

Barclay, then a Major League Soccer player for the Columbus Crew, was dating the Hummels' daughter, Brooke, at the time and was in Shelby for a visit. Garrett, then playing football for the Shelby Whippets, suggested Barclay give kicking a football a try.

So they headed outside.

"I tried it barefoot at first and it was kind of like, 'Whoa,'" Barclay said. "When kicking a soccer ball the challenge is not getting the ball high, it's keeping it down. The height part of it was never a problem. I just had to fine-tune my swing."

Terri Hummel remembers Barclay's birth as a placekicker as if it were yesterday.

"They went out in the street and started scooting farther and farther back," she said. "Denny came in and said, 'You should see how far he's hitting it.'"

The Hummels took Barclay to the practice field behind Shelby High School so he could take aim at the goal post and see if he had the accuracy to go with the distance. Then, on his next trip to town, they hopped the fence at Skiles Field, home of the Whippets, so they could more accurately mark off the yardage.

"Denny came home and said he was a natural," Terri said.
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OSU kicker discovered his skills in Shelby | newarkadvocate.com | The Newark Advocate
 
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Being from the Mansfield area originally...something good actually came out of Shelby!? :wink:

I kid, I kid.

Watching him during the New Mexico game was interesting, and I could tell he was still a little rough around the edges with his kicking. He still is a bit, but he is definitely getting better and has shown major improvement in just three weeks of playing. Hopefully he doesn't shank any to the left this weekend.
 
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Fun Buckeye fact, well kind of. As that article mentioned, Barclay used to date Garrett Hummel's sister. Craig Krenzel also used to date Hummel's sister (and former OSU homecoming queen I think...), though it's probably not the same sister because Garrett has one closer to Barclay's age.
 
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BigJim;1599172; said:
Fun Buckeye fact, well kind of. As that article mentioned, Barclay used to date Garrett Hummel's sister. Craig Krenzel also used to date Hummel's sister (and former OSU homecoming queen I think...), though it's probably not the same sister because Garrett has one closer to Barclay's age.
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And 5000 BPers Google "Garrett Hummel" +sister...

:biggrin:
 
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Ohio State kicker Barclay finds success in life after soccer
By Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY

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By Jamie Sabau, Getty Images
Ohio State kicker Devin Barclay (23) played for four different MLS teams in five seasons before his soccer career ended due to injuries at age 22.

Chad Marshall, a defender with the Columbus Crew and the U.S. soccer team, was a world away from the Horseshoe when he saw his friend Devin Barclay celebrate a very different kind of Goooooooal! A field goal.
Marshall was in Bratislava, Slovakia, last Saturday with the U.S. soccer team when he watched online as Barclay, a former pro soccer player, kicked a 39-yard field goal in overtime against Iowa to send Ohio State to the Rose Bowl for the first time in 13 years.

"I was so happy for him," Marshall said. "It didn't work out for him with soccer because of injuries, but it's a testament to his hard work that he didn't give up."

Barclay's journey from soccer prodigy to MLS cast-off to Buckeyes hero is one of the more unlikely stories of this college football season.

"It's a crazy path. There's so many different roads I had to take to get here," Barclay told MLSnet.com this week as Ohio State prepared to face Michigan on Saturday.

Barclay was 17 when he signed with MLS as a Project-40 player as part of the league's development program. He also represented the USA on three youth national teams. Playing for four MLS teams in five seasons, his career was derailed by injuries. He was waived by the Crew in 2005, and his soccer career was over at age 22.

"Sometimes you have to be in the right situation with people who believe in you," said Alfonso Mondelo, who coached Barclay with the Tampa Bay Mutiny and now is head of player personnel at MLS. "But when one door closed, another one opened."

Jim Schmidtke, who runs the Athletes in Action ministry for the Crew and Buckeyes, helped opened that door when he suggested that Barclay, who had never kicked field goals but had an especially strong leg, give football a try.

"He used to always crush the ball," Marshall said of Barclay's soccer days.

Barclay practiced at a local high school, enrolled at an OSU branch and, after gaining clearance from the compliance office, he walked on with the Buckeyes last year.

"He may have liked the fact that we were senior-citizen friendly. We had Ryan Pretorius (a 29-year-old former pro rugby player from South Africa and former Buckeyes kicker)," coach Jim Tressel said about Barclay, 26.

When Aaron Pettrey suffered a knee injury against New Mexico State three weeks ago, Barclay took over. The junior has been perfect with nine PATs and is 4-for-7 on field goals, with his longest ? 39 yards ? also the biggest.

"Nothing in soccer was ever like this," Barclay said afterward.
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Ohio State kicker Barclay finds success in life after soccer - USATODAY.com
 
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OSU kicker thrust into rose-hued spotlight
By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer
Saturday, November 21, 2009

COLUMBUS ? He?s the guy who saved the Ohio State season ? the player who kicked the Buckeyes past Iowa a week ago and into both a berth in the Rose Bowl and at least a share of the Big Ten title.

And yet there?s not a more unlikely hero than Devin Barclay. At 26, he is the oldest Buckeye, but he?s also the player with the least football experience on the team. A month ago, only the most ardent of OSU fans even knew his name.

A walk-on kicker, he has no scholarship and until recently didn?t even have his own jersey number. He wore No 12, same as star receiver Dane Sanzenbacher. It wasn?t a concern of the Bucks though. Aaron Pettrey was their veteran kicker. Barclay was the unheralded back-up and not about to get on the field.

Then Pettrey got hurt against New Mexico State on Oct. 31 and was lost for at least the three-game span ? Penn State, Iowa and Michigan, which the Bucks face today, Nov. 21, in Ann Arbor ? that would define the season.

Barclay was asked to take over even though he?d never played before this season. An All-America soccer player in high school, he had turned pro at 17 and played Major League Soccer for five seasons, the last two with the Columbus Crew.

Hampered by injuries, he retired, did a little coaching and then decided to try college, first going to an OSU branch.

About then, former Buckeye kicking great Vlade Janakievski, who runs the deli where Barclay often ate ? put him in contact with a more recent OSU kicker, Dan Stultz, who tutored him for six months. After that the guy who ran the Crew?s Bible study group made a video of him and got it to OSU.
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OSU kicker thrust into rose-hued spotlight
 
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For McDonogh's Barclay, a 'crazy ride' to Rose Bowl
Kicker enrolled at Ohio State after ending pro soccer career
By Glenn Graham
December 29, 2009

It began as a "cool idea" three years ago in the backyard of a friend's house in tiny Shelby, Ohio, after Devin Barclay found in a closet an old football that needed to be pumped up.

The Annapolis native, now 26, who played soccer at McDonogh before moving on to Major League Soccer in 2001, had never kicked a football before that night.

On New Year's Day, he will be kicking for Ohio State before 90,000-plus fans in Pasadena, Calif., and millions watching on television, as the Buckeyes take on Oregon in the 96th Rose Bowl.

"The first kick was a low line drive," Barclay said of his backyard experiment, "so I knew I just had to get lower on the ball. The next one ... it took off."

Barclay, who spent the last two years of a five-year MLS career with the Columbus Crew, says his Ohio State journey has been anything but conventional. After his soccer career ended in 2005, he eventually decided to enroll at Ohio State and made the team as a walk-on in 2007. Staying with it while pursuing a degree in sport and leisure studies, he finally got the chance to play in a game when starter Aaron Pettrey sustained a knee injury in a win over New Mexico State on Oct. 31.
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For McDonogh's Barclay, a 'crazy ride' to Rose Bowl -- baltimoresun.com
 
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