BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
MISSION — Parker Barrett didn’t think about sports growing up in De Kalb, a town about a half-hour drive west of Texarkana.
A self-described “farm boy,” Barrett was fascinated by the clear sky of an East Texas night.
“I’m really interested in the things that are unknown,” Barrett said. “Black holes, stars. Those things are interesting to me. I knew we had mostly clear night skies, so I asked my dad if I could have a telescope. I first had a telescope with a 20x zoom. When we moved to Rio (Grande City) we had a telescope with about a 500x or 600x zoom. We were looking at Jupiter and Saturn. It was blurry, but you could make it out.”
While space exploration has always piqued his interest, Barrett is a relative newcomer to football. He began playing as a seventh-grader in De Kalb.
“I wanted to play because of my aggressiveness,” Barrett said. “When I got to middle school, I finally got somewhere I can hit somebody without being punished.”
Barrett played freshman football and eventually made the varsity team as a sophomore at De Kalb High School before his family moved to Rio Grande City and, eventually, Mission.
Barrett grew into a 6-foot-5, three-sport athlete at Sharyland Pioneer. He’s a jumper on the track team, a pitcher on the baseball team and an outside linebacker on the football team.
Barrett was a part of the Diamondback defense that allowed the second-most points (355) in District 31-5A last season. First-year head coach Tommy Lee installed Marcelino de la Fuente as defensive coordinator and the improvements are palpable.
The Diamondbacks allowed 254 points through their first seven games of 2017. The defense has given up 206 points in Pioneer’s 4-3 start to 2018.
“I played defensive end last year, so I was down on the line with the three guys in the middle,” Barrett said. “I’m playing outside linebacker now and I had to reset everything over. With our coaches and my teammates helping me out, it wasn’t really much of a problem.”
Through seven games, Barrett has 49 tackles, three tackles for a loss, a fumble recovery and an interception.
“We have a weak side linebacker and a strong side linebacker in our system. When I first saw him, I knew he was going to be our new strong side linebacker and he’s lived up to it,” De la Fuente said. “He’s a ‘yes sir, no sir,’ kind of kid. He’s extremely intelligent, but he’s got that tenacity and mean streak in him to hit people. He’s the kind of guy you want on your defense.”
“Parker is one of our leaders on defense,” Lee said. “The kids gravitate to him and that’s hard to do nowadays. When he says something, people stop and listen to what he has to say. He doesn’t say a lot, but when he does, it’s of importance. He knows what we’re trying to get to with our group of kids. Him being a senior has kind of grounded us.”
Sharyland Pioneer’s 38-37 last-second loss to Sharyland High was a tough pill to swallow. It was the Rattlers’ fourth win in five tries against their district neighbors to the north, but they won’t have a lot of time to linger on the loss. The Diamondbacks will take a bus ride west to meet the winless Laredo Cigarroa Toros at 7 p.m. today at Shirley Field in Laredo.
“We have to let that loss fuel the fire for this week and the week after that and the week after that,” Barrett said. “We need to have something to keep our drive going. Like coach De la Fuente likes to tell us, ‘Eleven brothers are hard to beat.’”