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Unknown OSU kicker thrust into spotlight

Ohio State kicker Devin Barclay (23) celebrates after his field goal in overtime beat Iowa 27-24 in an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009, in Columbus.

AP photo by Amy Sancetta Ohio State kicker Devin Barclay (23) celebrates after his field goal in overtime beat Iowa 27-24 in an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009, in Columbus.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 9:10 PM 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.

Barclay was made a third-string kicker, which had so little cachet last year that he wasn’t even given one of those treasured gold pants charms that players and coaches get when they beat Michigan, which OSU did for the fifth straight time.

Although his number was changed to 23 when he became the starter, the equipment guys forgot to pack the new jersey for the Iowa game. So in the dressing room before the kickoff, they ripped his name patch off the old No. 12 shirt and sewed it — “kind of sketchily,” he laughed — to the back of another No. 23 they found.

Then all of a sudden the game is in overtime and Barclay said his pal Pettrey pulled him aside: “He said, ‘You’re gonna have a chance to be a hero, get yourself ready.’ As I was kicking into the net, he was in my ear, carrying on normal conversation, relaxing me.”

After making the 39-yarder to win the game, the stunned Barclay pulled off his helmet and began running around like a soccer player who’d just scored a goal.

Teammates mobbed him, fans poured onto the field, roses seemed to be everywhere. Later he’d get a text message from a soccer buddy who watched the game in Slovenia. Neighbors tied a bouquet of balloons to the door of his Columbus condo. On campus this week, students told him he was their hero.

But the wildest thing happened out there on the field right after the game. As he was mobbed, somebody pulled off his name tag and kept it as a souvenir.

Devin Barclay was nameless again — but this time for a gloriously different reason.

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