Barros’ unlikely path to USD has paid dividends

USD cornerback Shahid Barros was a project when he came to South Dakota from New Bedford, Mass., in the fall of 2021. He had a lot to prove, both to himself and to the coaches who brought him in.

With two weeks to go in the regular season, he has played a vital role in helping rev-up playoff talk in Coyote Nation. Yes, Barros’ delivery of excellence during this span has been impressive. But also necessary. 

The sophomore, paired with 2022 All-Missouri Valley junior Myles Harden on the other side, has been part of a defense that has become an unquestionable team strength. Last Saturday’s 14-7 road win over No. 10 Southern Illinois offers the most recent evidence of that.

“It was a statement game for us,” Barros said. “Everyone on the team wants to make it known that we are here, you know what I mean?”

Barros, who spent much of his childhood in Philadelphia, accompanied his youth football team to a Philadelphia Eagles practice as an 8-year-old. He took home some autographs from that visit and a lifetime plan. 

“I started playing football because my mom wanted me to get involved in things,” Barros said. “There was something I really liked about football. I was always fast as a kid and loved all the running around. We went to training camp as a team to watch the Eagles and it all looked so cool. I’m playing as a kid and I’m seeing these adults still playing that same game and having fun. I knew right then this was what I wanted to do.”

It’s a dream he still has. At 6-1, 190 pounds he has good size for a cornerback and a significant upside. He’s fourth on the team in tackles (45) and continues to emerge as an impact player.

“His freshman year, Shahid was a little like a baby deer – he played like he was new to college football,” said defensive pass game coordinator and defensive backs coach Miles Taylor. “But from that point on he has really grown and developed. He has bought into our culture and believes in doing things the right way without taking shortcuts. He has a very high ceiling – he can get even better.”

Most often when offenses have decided to try to pick on him rather than testing the highly regarded Harden, they have discovered that’s a poor strategy. Together the two are getting the job done.

“Playing in the same defense as Myles is motivational because Myles puts in the hard work and it’s paying off for him,” Barros said. “He definitely has a future in football after college. Having that kind of guy on the field with me and then knowing him really well off the field is a win-win.”

Barros moved from Philadelphia to Massachusetts right before he started high school. He attended New Bedford High School, where he starred at wide receiver and defensive back, and then spent a semester at St. Thomas More, a prep school in Oakdale, Conn., after graduating from St. Thomas More. 

He chose a prep school over going directly to college because he believed he was a better football player than his list of scholarship offers indicated.

This belief in himself has served him well since then out here in wild, untamed and uncrowded South Dakota, where he didn’t know anyone other than the coaches who recruited him when he began his career. 

Going back decades, the Coyote football program has recruited lots of players from outside the Midwest. Rosters in the 1970s had plenty of Floridians, for instance, with Californians also pretty common through the years. 

Not surprisingly, Massachusetts has never been a USD recruiting hotspot. If you show up in Vermillion to play college football and you are from Massachusetts, there has to be a story attached.

“The Coyotes were one of the few programs that wanted to give me the chance to play college football at a high level,” Barros said. “So I took a chance. It’s far away from where I’m from but it's been very interesting. I could have played at some Division II schools but I didn’t want to do that because I knew I wouldn’t be happy.”

Barros’ route to Vermillion went through Iowa, it turns out. Taylor, one of two former Iowa Hawkeyes on the USD defensive staff, had stayed in communication with St. Thomas More head coach Jason Manson, a former Hawkeye quarterback. Manson, who is now back working with the Iowa program, told Taylor and fellow Coyote assistant Elijah Hodge that Barros was capable of playing Division I football.

In Taylor’s time with Barros, he became more convinced.

“After five or six conversations with Shahid I really liked his mindset,” Taylor said. “His coach talked very highly of him and the more I talked to Shahid the more it seemed like he was going to be able to come in here from far away and be the kind of person who could fit in with what we’re trying to get done here culturally, mentally and physically.”

Barros has been part of what has become a distinctive process in 2023. It’s much easier to measure individual success and much easier to enjoy it if it comes within the context of a season that is still going places. 

“We have coaches who believe in us completely,” Barros said. “I think that’s what makes it easy for us to believe in them when they tell us what’s right and what is wrong and how we can be the best player we can be. They push us every day, from the first day of practice to the end of the week – it’s full-speed all the time. They get us fired up every day and that’s what makes us able to compete and be confident.”