Ryan Barker’s path to Penn State started with a summer sighting that sounded almost too good to be true.
Lance Frazier, Kennett High School’s head football coach and assistant athletic director, was in his office when custodians burst in with word that a kid was booming 50-yard field goals outside. Frazier went to see for himself and immediately knew the swing was different. The kicker was 6-foot-2, and Frazier figured he had to be a college-bound prospect.
Instead, it was an eighth grader named Ryan Barker, who had asked his father for a kicking tee at Christmas and was trying football for the first time. He would be a freshman at Kennett that fall, and Frazier quickly realized the Blue Demons had stumbled into something special.
“I immediately looked at the heavens,” Frazier told The Daily Collegian. “The football gods had finally blessed us with freakish talent. He's kicking like two or three balls, so I run in the locker room like, ‘Let me go get this kid some extra balls he can use.’”
Barker was already a soccer player, and for much of his high school career he lived in both worlds, juggling academics and two sports. He often arrived from soccer just in time for the end of football practice, since Kennett saved special teams work for last. That made him a little behind socially in the locker room, at least early on, while he was still getting acquainted with teammates.
“He was a typical kicker,” Frazier said. “They're a little bit off to the side, different from everybody in terms of how they prepare because their pressure is different from everybody else's.”
Frazier could see where this was headed. He told Barker that coaches like Nick Saban and James Franklin would eventually ask him, “Are you going to play soccer, or are you going to kick the football?”
Barker picked football before his senior season, and that choice led him to become the first Division I football player from Kennett when he committed to Penn State as a preferred walk-on in July 2022.
For Frazier, that commitment meant plenty in a community with deep Penn State ties. Kennett Square, a small suburb of Philadelphia, has a large number of alumni from the university, and Barker’s rise resonated even more because of it. His younger brother, Shay, is now a Division I kicker at Syracuse, and the two played one season together at Kennett.
“We never had been a heavily-recruited area,” Frazier said. “There's so many Penn State roots and alumni here in Kennett.
It was surreal. I knew the impact it would have on others.
He's a legendary guy for the kids because he let them know that guys from Kennett can make it big time.”
Barker’s Penn State climb wasn’t immediate. He redshirted in 2023 and lost the starting job to Sander Sahaydak in 2024 before Sahaydak struggled, going 2-for-5 on field goals through four weeks. That opened the door for Barker, who made his debut against UCLA and knocked through both field goal attempts and all three extra points.
A week later, he delivered the moment that pushed him into college football’s spotlight. In overtime at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Penn State and USC were tied 30-30 when Barker drilled a 36-yard game-winner - the first such kick for the Nittany Lions since Sam Ficken’s 36-yarder against UCF in 2014.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, is to hit a game-winning kick,” Barker said after the game on Oct. 12, 2024.
“It means a lot to me and my teammates. I’m just super proud of myself.”
At Penn State, special teams coordinator Justin Lustig has built Barker around a “one shot, one kill” approach. The phrase is meant to keep the whole special teams unit locked in on the snap and the kick in front of them, but Barker said there’s a kicker-specific layer to it too.
“It's being able to weigh the importance of the fact that it’s ‘one shot, one kill,’” Barker said. “It allows you to hone in on the sole focus of trying to replicate that feeling of the ball contact. That's how I would describe it.”
Lustig has pushed that same mindset to the rest of the unit, including punter Nathan Tiyce and long snapper Blaise Sokach-Minnick. For Barker, it has become a way to stay level after misses and keep pressure from creeping in.
“Once I got that mindset going, the pressure was just non-existent, honestly, because it gave me a centered focus on what I needed to do,” Barker said Aug. 7.
“The outside noise and pressure is something that could distract me if I let it. I'm not gonna let anything get in the way of what I need to do.”
Tiyce, who handles holding duties for Barker, has seen how that approach plays out on game day.
“He's one of the toughest people I know,” Tiyce said. “The way he rebounds and responds to adversity is his key to everything.
He'll go on the sideline, and he's like a goldfish. The only thing we're focusing on is that next kick.”
Barker has missed two kicks this season, and he knows exactly how much those moments sting. Still, he says that feeling is part of what drives him.
“You never want to have that feeling of what it feels like when you miss, and that's honestly the fuel that I use,” Barker said. “I hate the feeling of missing.
It's really awful. So I’m chasing to never feel that again and it’s how I keep myself going.”
After the loss to Wisconsin, Barker described his job as being a “safety net.” With Penn State now 0-2 in the Big Ten, that responsibility has only become more important.
“If I go out onto the field, I'm putting points on the board when the offense may not be flowing as easily,” Barker said. “Embracing that as much as possible and knowing that I’ve got the team’s back - that's honestly where I want to be at.”
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