Three former pioneers walking with OSU football Sports

When the Oklahoma State football team begins its annual preseason team camp next month, it will include a trio of recent Stillwater High workers.

Carter Barnard, Steven Brown and Luke McEndoo will all attend the Cowboy program this fall and lift a total of five former pioneers participating in the OSU program. All three helped build the SHS program for one of the state’s elites before they wanted to pursue their football careers.

Each of the three have different reasons to join their hometown, but as they see them continue their careers, SHS coach Tucker Barnard is proud.

They all three got popular walking destinations, Tucker Barnard said. It’s a really neat deal. These guys grow up dreaming of playing college football, and apparently a bunch of them go to Oklahoma State when they’re kids. The type of dream for kids who get this opportunity. I’m excited about them.

Carter Barnard made no public or social media announcement of his decision. It’s gone under the radar, but he and his father are excited about it.

Some of him going under the radar is probably my fault, Barnard said. I was pretty intentional not hyping my own son. In his honor, it doesn’t bother him. Obviously, he’s grown up with me, so he knows how it’s likely to play. I have wanted him to deserve everything he has been given.

He was a great football player for us. He did an excellent job at the back end and did a bunch of tackles and plays. He says right now he wants to coach. He had opportunities to go play Division II football, but I felt that experience from this level if he really wanted to coach and stick to it, and being close to that level of competition would ultimately benefit him.

Carter Barnard collected 64 tackles this year, an increase from 50 younger years. He also restored the blocked field for goal touch. At a younger age, he had four interruptions a year when SHS reached the second straight season of the state title game.

He thinks OSU’s visit will allow him to continue playing football while potentially helping him work on his career. Coach Barnard said Carter has also talked about joining the coaching team one day, so learning under the guidance of OSU coach Mike Gundy and his staff can be a good foot in the door.

Carters ’knowledge of the game is something Dad noticed years ago. It helped him help as the second-level director of SHS for the past two years as a defensive starter.

Although he was smaller than the other guys all the way back to seventh grade football, he gave instructions to the back end, Tucker Barnard said. He has always been smart and showed guys around and helped them understand the system. I think a lot of it comes from just what he has at home.

In the same mindset, Luke is moving forward in the same way. You could watch Read in any game defensively, and he can move someone to the other side or line someone up. I think it’s just because we talk at home or watch football games at home.

McEndoo also chose OSU because of coaching, but in a different way. His father, Jason McEndoo, is the OSU Cowboy Backs coach. He coaches the Cowboys, who play back and tight, which are combined to play the role of Cowboy Back.

It’s one of McEndoo’s roles at Stillwater High. He started as a rear-end freshman and helped backpack Qwontrel Walker become one of the top ten rushes in the states in terms of career concentrations.

Being able to continue playing a similar role and doing it for his father was an easy decision for McEndo.

Apparently I’m going to go play with my full-size dad, McEndoo said. I talked to Gunnar (Gundy) and ended up talking to coach Gundy and he said he has loved you to come play. My dad told me that Id isn’t likely to play for the first year, but later down the road Id has a chance to be a really good player. Hearing my father and coach Gundy told me it was a really neat moment.

Coach Barnard is happy that McEndoo is joining the Cowboys and believes he can participate on the field.

Hell go and can attend there, Barnard said. He is a great player. Good professional athlete. He plays baseball, he plays basketball, but also a strong, physical guy with a great work ethic. Hell has a chance to do something there for sure.

The thing that has probably bothered him the most is his height. You look at the men they recruit for these positions and offer scholarships, and they tend to be taller, like 6-3 or 6-4 and bigger. I think Luke has a lot to offer. He is a great football player.

When McEndoo announced, he did it in a video in which he walked out of a tunnel under Boone Pickens Stadium. It was something he put with his father and a moment he won’t forget.

We went there late one night and he was just using the phone, McEndoo said. It got the job done. It was a really cool moment. It was weird that it didn’t have blue or yellow, but it was a cool moment. My dad is so proud of the video. That was his idea. It turned out pretty cool. He liked it a lot.

McEndoo had a few offers, one of which was on offer, including from the state of Montana, where he grew up before moving to Stillwater. The others were the NCAA Div. II school.

Ultimately, playing for his father and his hometown were two factors that were too big to ignore. The same goes for former SHS defender Gunnar Gundy, who played with three new football for three years.

I think the same thing with Gunnar’s schools knows their father is coaching at OSU, McEndoo said. I hadn’t had a whole bunch of interest except for some smaller schools, but I knew I could play at Division I level, so I really didn’t look at them much. I talked a lot with the UCO and they are really good. I talked to the state of Montana for a while, but I kept thinking I would come play for my dad anyway. It was a little recruiting, but not much because they knew I was likely to come here.

I’m going to live in Stillwater so I can still come home and have dinner. It attracts a lot of guys. Since OSU has been good for about 14 years, being around it and seeing them win is definitely a great thing to want to belong to, even if you’re not a scholarship. Coach Gundy likes a lot of walkers, and has had a bunch of guys who have walked and earned a scholarship, so that’s also the part that would be cool on the road.

McEndoo also played defense in Stillwater. He was a force to withstand offensive lines, often breaking into the backfield and wreaking havoc. Those days are over for him now, but he won’t forget that.

It made me realize I probably won’t be able to do it again, McEndoo said he won the Defensive Defender of the Year honor. It was fun playing defense because it allowed me to play a lot and do big plays here and there. Apparently I had good players around me. Being able to fight a quarterback or running back was pretty fun, and it was a nice break just to block all the time. It was fun for three years.

For Brown, going to OSU is a bit of feedback. He exploded into the spot during his junior season at Stillwater, grabbing 44 passes with 907 yards and 13 touches.

Brown had to tweak with his teammate Anthony Bland, who plays at Princeton University, according to statistics, until he tore his ACL in the opening season of Stillwaters ’first playoff.

He worked hard and returned as fall leader. He got 33 assists to 608 yards and eight touches in a Pioneers attack that wasn’t as high as the previous year, but still managed with a 9-1 record.

I feel good now, but at the beginning of the year I was in recession trying to regain my self-confidence, Brown said. Eventually I did and had a good season.

Undersized but fast Brown spoke with OSU offensive coordinator and wide receiver coach Kasey Dunn about joining the Cowboys.

It was the speech he needed to make the decision official.

Myself and Coach Dunn had a conversation, and it made me make a statement, Brown said. We were just talking about what I was playing and how it was going to be when I got there. It made me feel already on the team.

I just feel like I can fit in really well. I have always had the dream of being a cowboy.