BACK IN NY GROOVE
Parents left area to create better life for Barkley, and now he returns to make them & Giants proud
Saquon Barkley stepped onto the stage in the auditorium at the Quest Diagnostics Training Center in East Rutherford on Saturday morning to the sound of cameras clicking and lights flashing as the No. 2 overall pick was officially being welcomed to the Giants.
The six-foot, 233-pound, 21-year-old kid from Coplay, Pa,. held up a blue No. 26 jersey in front of his all-black suit with an ear-toear grin on his face. Moments later, he was alone in front of the podium when he leaned into the microphone and announced:
“I’m Saquon Barkley, running back of the New York Giants, and I’m just so happy to be a part of the Giants.”
The kid known as “Little Barry Sanders” in the Lehigh Valley is finally in the NFL, but it was a journey that may not have been possible if not for a sacrifice Barkley’s parents made when he was about five years old.
Alibay Barkley and Tonya Johnson, Saquon’s parents, grew up in the South Bronx and resided together at Lyman Place on Prospect Ave. and 169th St.
It was a dangerous neighborhood and a place where Saquon’s father said he was prone to “bad decisions.”
Alibay had struggled with drug addiction and had multiple arrests, which included a year in jail on Rikers Island for a gun charge. As he and Johnson began to raise a family together, moving away from the city was a chance to escape those “bad decisions,” and giving their children a better place to live became a priority.
“There were a lot of factors,” he told the Daily News. “It wasn’t like it was a dire situation. Just a better opportunity.”
That opportunity was in Pennsylvania, where Johnson’s grandmother lived and they would visit often. It was there that Johnson wanted to raise her kids.
“The environment, the kids would have fun,” she said. “I wanted them to have this. To be able to do this. When you go to the park and you’re able sit there and just constantly watch them all the time like — there was more grass out there. The air was better and Saquon had asthma when he was a child. Every time he went out there he didn’t need the pump. He didn’t need the machine. So it was just a better environment.”
That better environment also helped Saquon discover his love and passion for football.
Growing up in the inner city, it would have been difficult to find a youth football team for Saquon. Alibay said they did not really start to have inner city youth football programs until around 1998-99 and that most of the opportunities were really in Westchester.
Yet when they moved to Pennsylvania, “they had it everywhere, and he saw it.”
Football had always been on Saquon’s mind as a child. At a young age, Alibay would sit with Saquon and watch their favorite team, the Jets, on
TV together. Alibay even has a Jets tattoo on his elbow. But before there was football, he tried to get Saquon into his true passion: boxing. Boxing blood runs deep in the Barkley family. Alibay was an amateur boxer, competing in the Daily News Golden Gloves tournament from 1991-93, but an arm injury prevented him from further competition. Alibay’s uncle and Saquon’s greatuncle, Iran Barkley, was a professional boxer who was a three-weight world champion, holding the WBC middleweight title in 1988-89, the IBF super middleweight title from 1992-93 and WBA light heavyweight in 1992.
Boxing never caught on with Saquon, though.
“I tried (to get him in),” Alibay said. “I had a (punching) pad. I still got that stuff now.”
Instead it was football that Saquon fell in love with and his parents noticed it the moment they signed him up for a flag football team while living in Allentown, Pa.
“He was very excited, elated, ecstatic, joyful,” said Alibay.
It did not take long to learn Saquon had a special talent on the gridiron.
When he was about 8 or 9 years old Alibay made a bet with his son. He told him if he scored 15 touchdowns in the season he would give him $100.
“Just before the 15th touchdown, he was running and I was on the sideline going like this,” Alibay said, waving his arms as if to say stop. “And he was smiling because he knew he was going to get that $100 but they called a flag. He put his head down and walked back.
“They pushed them back a few yards. They gave him the ball again and took off,” Alibay said as he smacked his hands together. “He got the $100 on the very next play.” The legend of Saquon Barkley began to grow throughout
the Lehigh Valley and he was soon generating buzz before he took the field for the varsity team at Whitehall High School.
“In youth football, they called him Little Barry Sanders,” Whitehall head coach Brian Gilbert told the Daily News.
Gilbert was impressed with Saquon’s athleticism, but as a freshman he felt the running back was undersized, too skinny and not as talented as the upperclassmen.
It was not until the end of his sophomore year when the running back ahead of him on the depth chart got hurt and they had to turn to Saquon for the last game and playoffs.
“The first touch we gave him he took it 55 yards for a touchdown,” Gilbert said. “I remember saying to one of my assistants on the headset, ‘maybe we should have played this kid sooner.’”
Whitehall would win the league title that season and again in Saquon’s junior year.
Saquon would further his legend at Penn State where he became an instant star and shattered school records.
He finished as Penn State’s leader in career rushing touchdowns (43) and total touchdowns (53). He also surpassed Larry Johnson’s program record of 5,045 career all-purpose yards with 5,538.
He was a rock star on a football-frenzied campus that was thwarted back into the national limelight after struggling through the aftermath of Jerry Sandusky.
Gilbert was most proud of the way Saquon carried himself through it all. “Penn State is a big platform,”
he said. “He could have gotten a big head, but he stayed level-headed.”
Now he is in New York — the biggest media platform in the world — and about to sign a lucrative rookie contract that comes with high expectations and scrutiny of everything he does on and off the field.
Saquon sounds up for the challenge, too, and does not plan on being content with just reaching the NFL. He wants to be the best and win titles. “I had a lot of family and fans in my section and to be able to see that put a smile on their face and not just saying we made it because we didn’t make it,” he said. “That’s not the goal and the dream to make it to the NFL draft. The goal and the dream is to win championships, be a dominant player — (the draft) is just a stepping stone.”
It is also not lost on him that he is back to where it all began, the city he was born in and the one his parents left so they could give him and his four siblings a better life.
While his focus lies on what is ahead, he could not help but realize how things have come full circle and took a moment to acknowledge his parents for carving out the path to help him reach the stepping stone to launch his NFL career.
“The impact definitely looking back on it — the sacrifice that my mom and my dad made not only for myself but for my siblings, and that’s why that night, that draft night, was so special,” he said. “To be able to walk up on that podium and receive that jersey, and thankfully it’s a New York Giants jersey and be able to have my parents see that and let them know that the sacrifice and everything they made for the family and the way that they taught me and being a little kid and the way that they raised me is all coming together.
“I’m going to continue to try to do the right things and make not only my mother and father, but my brothers
and sisters, proud.”