A few tough innings: New life for a veteran and cancer survivor at Roger Bacon

It’s a sun-splashed afternoon in St. Bernard without a cloud in the sky and the Roger Bacon softball team is hosting Norwood in the regular-season finale.

Roger Bacon head coach Joey Barrow loves it. When he goes to a local coffee shop, he prefers a table outside where he can listen to the birds chirp and traffic flow over the frantic, subtle chatter from every direction inside.

“I appreciate the small things like that,” he said.

That appreciation grew naturally over time for Barrow, a two-time brain cancer survivor and Iraq War Veteran.

On this game day, Barrow wears khaki shorts, a gray T-shirt, and most importantly, a brown throwback Roger Bacon hat.

Former Roger Bacon athletic director Joe Corcoran gave him the hat. When Barrow returned from the war and beat cancer the first time, Corcoran helped him transition into civilian life, offering him a job helping out in the athletic department.

“He (Corcoran) was one of the first people to help me become a normal person,” Barrow said. “He took a chance on me.”

Corcoran died in February 2013.

“That crushed me,” Barrow said.

It also inspired him. He vowed to live a life Corcoran would be proud of.

“He would’ve wanted me to be a servant.”

So, here he is, pacing the Roger Bacon dugout and giving back in his first year as a high school softball coach.

1st inning

Roger Bacon’s bats come out on fire, scoring fives times. When you put the ball in play, good things happen.

For Barrow, the same happened when he began changing his life around to honor Corcoran. No more just going with the flow. He'd set out to find happiness and make a difference in the lives of others.

“I was able to change and all this good stuff started happening,” he said.

In 2014, he discovered Team Rubicon, a veteran-led disaster-response agency. He helped in Texas after Hurricane Harvey, then later in Newbern, North Carolina, after Hurricane Florence and in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, after the fires. For his work, he earned two Presidential Volunteer Service Awards.

“Joe would’ve been super proud."

That same year, he met Nicolle. They went to the movies in Newport for their first date on Memorial Day weekend. Less than three years later, they were married.

Nicolle is able to balance being a mother to her 15-year-old son, juggling full-time work and school schedules and her newest gig as a coach.

“I told her I needed a female on my coaching staff and she jumped right in,” he said. “She’s a superstar.”

2nd inning

Barrow, from the third-base coaches’ box, encourages senior Elizabeth Weigand to keep battling after fouling off a pair of pitches with the count even at 2-2.

“Stay in the fight, kid,” he urged.

Barrow is speaking from experience.

Barrow had joined the Navy after graduating from Roger Bacon in 2002 and was aboard the U.S.S. George Washington before joining Task Force 55 with the 5th Fleet in Bahrain.

In 2005, he experienced bizarre sensations in his head. After migraine medications didn’t help, multiple tests were done, revealing a tumor. His world changed overnight.

“I’m 21 years old and have all sorts of stuff to do,” Barrow said. “All of that came to a screeching halt.”

3rd inning

Before Roger Bacon’s turn at the plate, Barrow attempts to adjust third base into the correct spot after a slide jarred it out of place. After a few moments of tweaking and rotating, he gives up and flips his palms skyward, as if to say, “oh, well.”

It’s a rarity to see Barrow throw in the towel with anything. It was never an option before. After an 18.5-hour surgery that left him without part of his skull, he moved back to Cincinnati and continued to fight, starting with an optimistic outlook.

“I just ate right, stayed active, stayed positive and kept my faith and it went away. I beat it. The tumor just slowly disappeared,” he said.

It was the same mindset he had planned to use in training to become a Navy Seal. When his tumor was discovered, Barrow was only a few weeks away from going to Coronado, California, for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training.

“My orders to BUD/S were sitting on my chief’s desk,” Barrow remembers.

Despite a high drop-out rate, Barrow was confident he’d make it. Running the beach in boots, two-mile swims, obstacle courses and drown-proofing wouldn’t derail him.

That was stripped away.

The can-do mentality developed in the military that should’ve been used to get a trident on his chest was instead utilized when he was homeless from 2006-2008, sleeping in his car or on a friend’s couch in the Washington, D.C., area so he wouldn’t miss treatment. He hated not having a place to call home, but he was resourceful and had to do what was needed to survive.

“I wasn’t gonna miss my appointments,” Barrow said. “I used that mindset to beat cancer.”

A lackadaisical defensive effort allows a Norwood runner to move into scoring position.

"Do not quit on a ball," Barrow yelled from the dugout.

Though he beat cancer, it didn't mean his mindset conquered all. His mental health suffered. PTSD, effects from loss and seeing his military friends not make it home, took its toll.

“I’m just trying to take care of myself, but it was destroying me.”

4th inning

It's now a 5-2 game and Barrow rips his hat off in a brief moment of frustration after a Roger Bacon runner is thrown out at home to end the inning.

It’s true Dan Starkey fashion, according to Barrow.

In high school, Barrow played for Starkey, a football coach at Roger Bacon for nearly 40 years and one of the reasons he pursued the sideline life.

Outside of youth sports and recreational leagues, Barrow’s coaching career started as a junior varsity assistant at Oak Hills in 2016. He was out of softball for the next five years, but again, never gave in, until his dream job opened up at his alma mater in 2021.

He was named the head coach in February.

“It’s something I wanted to do and here I am. I’m doing it.”

5th inning

Roger Bacon, leading 7-2, nearly escapes a jam, but a two-out fly ball is dropped, resulting in a Norwood run.

Barrow has worked hard to instill a short memory in his players.

“Don’t dwell on the past,” Barrow explained. “Questions on what you could’ve done differently are for after the game, not during.”

He wants his players in the moment like he was when he saw combat for the first time in the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, less than two months after his 21st birthday.

“You just fall back on your training and focus on what needs to be done. You don’t really think about it until it’s over,” Barrow said.

6th inning

Roger Bacon loads the bases with no outs – the quintessential situation to pull away.

Barrow, despite his struggles, has been here before, too. In 2013, he had beaten cancer and found a new job on the Ohio River working on coal barges.

“It was a great job, a ton of money, I thought, 'This is the life,’” Barrow said.

Then, a familiar feeling came back to his head.

"I know what this is," he remembered thinking.

7th inning

Roger Bacon comes up empty in the sixth and Norwood threatens immediately in the final frame, scoring a run and loading the bases with two outs, sending the go-ahead run to the plate.

“Take some deep breaths here,” Barrow said to senior pitcher Sammi Hoffman.

Barrow is cool and calm in dangerous situations. In fact, he seeks them out. He enjoyed working on coal barges, suspecting it was a way to replace his time in the military, trading the Persian Gulf for the Ohio River.

“It was like being at sea again and there was an element of thrill. I think that’s why I loved it."

There was even more danger on tap, though. His tumor had returned. He was back under the knife less than a month later. He’d win that battle, too.

Not that stressful softball situations like this one don’t make him uneasy; it’s just simpler to put things in perspective.

“Those situations have perfectly trained me for something like this,” he said.

Hoffman snags a game-ending pop-up and Roger Bacon wins, 7-4. They finish the regular season 11-6, the program’s first winning campaign since 2018.

Post-game

A team huddle in left field after the win is anything but joyous. Barrow is dispirited from what he felt was a lack of sportsmanship from his team through bickering in the dugout and speaking out on controversial calls.

“At Roger Bacon, we’re all about sportsmanship. We’re a Franciscan school: service, kindness, compassion and understanding,” Barrow said.

He knows the feeling of not living up to expectations. In 2010, a bar fight left him with a two-week stay in a justice center, reading books with missing pages.

“That was rock bottom,” Barrow recalls. “What am I doing here? I don’t wanna live like this anymore. I’m a veteran with an honorable discharge. There’s a standard that I have to uphold.”

Barrow looks drained, slumped over as he sits on a cooler, talking to assistant coach Jonathan Cole. Despite the disappointment with his team’s lack of gamesmanship, “a win is a win.”

Sometimes, Barrow’s learned, you just appreciate the end result regardless of the turbulent journey to get there.

In the big picture, he’s fulfilled a coaching dream at his alma mater. He's also found his soulmate. He’s a veteran and a survivor who has become a positive influence on others across the nation through his volunteer efforts.

Plus, the sun is shining and he’s wearing his favorite hat.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Veteran, cancer survivor Joey Barrow finds new life at Roger Bacon