Grapevine QB fought for track district title

In the District 6-5A 200-meter dash final April 14, Grapevine’s Sam Barry stumbled out of the block. By the time he regained his footing, considerable distance had formed between him and the pack.

“After the race, Coach [Michael Ludlow] said that after that start, it didn’t even look like I had a chance,” Barry said.

That’s kind of how the senior year began for Barry athletically.

Last fall, Barry rode the high of signing to play quarterback for his dream school, the Air Force Academy, into what shaped up to be a promising final high school football season.

Two and a half games in, he stumbled.

Torn posterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his knee ensured he’d see the bench for the majority of the season.

“You don’t lose any D1 kid and your team not be highly effected,” Grapevine football coach Randy Jackson said. “With him being a quarterback, It was a double-whammy.”

Barry regained his footing in the form of extensive rehab work that brought him back to the practice field in five short weeks, but while running drills at safety to help solidify the Mustang defense, he again tore the same two ligaments in the same knee.

The next day he was told his high school football career was over.

“That’s really, I think, when it hit home for me,” Barry said. “I got pretty emotional about it because I knew that I would be done with all the kids I grew up with playing football. That was really hard for me to deal with.”

Barry pushed through another rehab prescription, performing at a much slower pace than before to assure strength and stability would return to the knee. Dallas Cowboys team doctor Dan Cooper, who was treating Barry, told him surgery was never in the picture for this type of injury.

“I think the thing that got me through was going to Air Force,” Barry said. “I get to do this and I have bigger and better things. I knew that once I got to Air Force, I would be fine.”

But his time at Grapevine felt incomplete. He didn’t get to leave Mustangs athletics on his own terms, with his friends beside him. He also had never won a district championship in any sport while at Grapevine, including his middle school years.

So, not long after completing his second round of rehab, Barry decided to run track for the fourth straight year.

It wasn’t an easy endeavor, building strength and finding time to work out with Ludlow, the boys track coach, around a busy spring schedule.

“He had stuff that he could have been going and doing and getting ready for, but he wanted to finish out their high school career right,” Ludlow said. “It’s the last thing – track. Who wants to have the mess beat out of them, getting the crud run out of them, and really stick to that? It’s unbelievable.”

Soon, in a trial by fire, Ludlow and Barry realized the sprinter was back to full strength and became a vital piece of Grapevine’s 4x100-meter and 4x200-meter relay teams as well as running the open 200.

Pressure surrounded the program as it entered the district meet. Most around the school traditionally expected little from a program that had not won a team district title in as long as anyone could remember, Ludlow said.

“The kids rallied around him,” Ludlow said. “They knew they were trying to do something that hadn’t been done in a long, long time there.”

That pressure boiled over when Barry saw the distance that separated him from the pack. He put his head down, made up the ground and would finish 0.18 seconds behind the 200-meter district champion, Timothy Gowans of Lake Dallas.

“When it came down to it at the end, he always found a way to finish,” Barry said. “He was always going to be the guy that when the dust settled, he was standing in the middle of it, head held high because he got this done.”

Barry’s knee will be at full strength when he enters the Air Force Academy this fall to play football and carry out his dream of becoming a fighter pilot. After four years of school and a year of pilot training, he will serve a 10-year commitment to the Air Force.

“He’s got a very, very bright future to look forward to,” Ludlow said. “I’m not just talking about academically and athletically and all that at the Air Force Academy. This kid is going to do a lot of great things in his life, that’s just the type of kid that he is.”

For starters, he was a vital part of the first Grapevine boy’s track district championship team in as long as anyone could remember.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Grapevine QB fought for track district title."