Away from the Spotlight, Saquon Barkley Shows Why He’s Special

By Vincent Corso

I will never forget the determination. Here was Saquon Barkley, the biggest football star at Penn State in a generation, playing a game with a group of star-struck kids and he wouldn’t give up.

He asked the kids, a mix of girls and boys from the Centre County Youth Service Bureau, how many times they thought they would be able to hit a football in the air without it touching the ground.

The kids were unsure. They weren’t so good at sports. Many of them had difficult lives, and participating in sports wasn’t something they were able or allowed to do growing up. They were working with the YSB to turn their lives around, but they had no idea if they could play this game with Barkley. He was a star. Who were they? 

But one of the kids shouted out “26.” Barkley smiled — he wore No. 26 for Penn State. 

“OK, I like that. Let’s do it,” said Barkley. He made sure the kids understood that if they said 26, they were going to work together to get 26 touches, no matter what it took. The kids were not sure, but they did not want to let him down.

The first couple of attempts did not go well. Barkley would tap the football to one of the 15 kids in a circle and they would hit it to someone else sporadically, over the head or down to the ground. One young man hit the ball badly on purpose just to ruin the game for everyone else, and suddenly 26 looked like an unattainable number. Some of the kids looked defeated, but Barkley was not going to let them fail, and he was not going to fail them.

I believe that you can really tell a lot about a person during the difficult times, when things aren’t going the way you thought they would.

Last fall, Barkley was the talk of the town and the biggest thing in Centre County. The preseason brought Heisman Trophy talk and national title hopes. The season started off with a bang, and Barkley was the darling of college football. He was putting up big numbers, he was making highlights and it didn’t look like he could be stopped.

When he returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown against Ohio State in late October, I remember shouting that the Heisman Trophy was his, and everyone I was watching with agreed. 

Then, the second half of that game happened. The close loss was a heartbreaker, but Penn State was still in it. There was still time for a bounce-back, with Michigan State up next. Then came the thunderstorm. 

After a long delay in the game in East Lansing, Penn State never looked right. Barkley was bottled up and had one of the most difficult games of the season. The Nittany Lions fell again, and the promising season suddenly seemed lost. The chances of a national title were just about gone and Barkley was no longer the Heisman frontrunner. 

But, this is when Barkley acted in a way that shows what kind of person he is. During the lowest part of the season, Barkley went to his coaches and asked them to set him up with a community service project where he could give back in order to keep things in perspective.

Barkley certainly didn’t have to do it. He was not in trouble. He did not need community service hours. He wanted to do it. 

So the day after the next home game, Barkley visited the Youth Service Bureau for breakfast, and found a group of kids who needed someone to look up to. 

He answered every question the kids threw at him, and made sure to pose for each picture that anyone wanted. The kids were shy and nervous, but Barkley broke the ice and asked them if they wanted to play a game of catch. Soon enough, the group was outside trying to keep that football from touching the ground.

The Cleveland Browns? The New York Giants? The New York Jets? At the time of this writing, I don’t know which team picked Barkley during the NFL draft on Thursday night, but whichever team drafts him will not be disappointed.

And I am certain any community that he becomes a part of will be better off with him in it.

Twenty-four, 25, 26! The kids at the YSB got up to that number and even past it after a few tries and they were excited that they had done it. But, soon, the ante was upped by No. 26 himself. He pushed the kids to reach even higher and shoot for a bigger number and soon they were trying for a number close to 100.

Most of the adults, like myself, seemed unsure. After all, this could take a while. They had struggled to get 26 touches and we didn’t want Barkley to be there all day. We knew that kids sometimes lose patience if things get to be too difficult and something seems unattainable.  Some of the kids might react with anger or sadness if they could not do it.

But that was why Barkley was there — to show these kids that even when times get tough, you can still move forward, you can still grow. After a particularly bad bump, a kid might look sad or down in the dumps about messing things up, but Barkley encouraged everyone and went right back to it.

“We got this,” he told them. 

It took a long time. But Barkley would not let the kids give up. He went around the circle and had each kid hit the ball back to him and he moved to the next kid. After every errant bump, there went Barkley like a volleyball player digging for a spike. By the end of it, Barkley was sweating and tired. Finally, they got close to the magic number and all the kids waited in anticipation until that last hit was made.

“We did it!” said Barkley. 

“We did it!” yelled the kids. 

Who were they?

That day, they were on a team with the great Saquon Barkley and they will remember it for the rest of their lives. He didn’t have to do it, but when times were difficult he worked harder and found a way to keep growing, and hopefully they will, too.