Moses Barker: Soccer prodigy turned football kicker phenom

Moses Barker was named for his grandfather and great-grandfather. Long before he became one of the nation’s top high school kickers, though, nearly all of his athletic life revolved around a different kind of kicking.

He started playing soccer when he was four or five. He tried T-ball and basketball, too, but soccer was the sport he loved. By age seven, he was playing club soccer with Wake FC. His coach, Rocco Strazzala, helped show him what it took to compete at a high level. Moses worked hard to earn a place on the first team and loved being around teammates who worked just as hard. Together, they traveled around the country and reached finals.

His mother, Stella, says she never had to remind him to practice.

Moses made the Willow Spring High School varsity soccer team as a freshman. He was still playing club soccer, and his high school team won its conference and made the playoffs. As far as he knew, his future was in soccer. He hoped to play it in college.

Then, near the end of his freshman year, his PE teacher, Varsity Football Head Coach Jason Wilkes, made a suggestion.

“I bet you can kick a football.”

Moses had never kicked one before. He gave it a try and made a 45-yard field goal. Wilkes put him on the football team, with a plan to start him in the first two games on JV.

That summer, Stella and her husband, Moses’s father Brett, connected Moses with a kicker at NC State, who suggested they contact kicking coach Dan Orner. Stella credits Wilkes and Orner with changing her son’s life. Orner saw potential in Moses and began training him alongside some of the top high school kickers he worked with.

For a while, Moses did everything. As a sophomore, he played varsity soccer, club soccer and varsity football while taking AP classes. On at least one occasion, he finished a soccer game, got in the car and made it to a football game in time to play the second half.

He still hoped to play college soccer. But as he attended football camps and learned more about his opportunities as a kicker, he faced a difficult choice. Orner asked him to think about whether he wanted to pursue soccer at a Division II or Division III school or football at the Division I level.

Moses called it a business decision. He stepped away from club soccer, personally calling the people who had helped him to thank them for the opportunities they had given him. He put his energy into kicking, and the results followed.

At a Kohl’s ranking camp in Dallas during his junior year, Moses was initially ranked eighth, then moved up to sixth. At a camp in Florida that January, he won a kicking competition. A few weeks later, while the family was driving home, they learned he had reached No. 1 in Kohl’s national kicker rankings.

Recruiting picked up quickly. Moses visited schools, met coaches and learned how few spots were available for specialists on a college football roster. Air Force made his first offer. Other programs followed, and coaches came to Willow Spring to watch him kick in person.

NC State had been part of Moses’s life long before it became part of his recruitment. His grandfather graduated from the university, and the family has been going to games at Carter-Finley Stadium since Moses was four months old. His great-grandfather graduated from NC State in 1940.

Still, Stella and Brett wanted Moses to choose the school that was right for him. They let him handle the recruiting conversations and encouraged him to think through each opportunity.

After NC State watched him kick, the school made an offer within 48 hours. Moses saw a chance to compete for the kicking job early and to keep working with Orner nearby. Just before Memorial Day, he sat down with NC State special teams coordinator Todd Goebbel, who explained why the program wanted him and answered his questions.

Moses felt he had found his place. He committed on Memorial Day.

“NC State made the best sense,” he said. “I have a good opportunity to go in there and immediately play. It’s close to home, I have a lot of friends there, and it’s just two hours from my coach in Charlotte.”

For Stella, seeing her son in an NC State uniform will be hard to believe, even after all the games her family has attended there.

“I couldn’t have dreamed of this for him,” she said.

She is proud of the ranking and the scholarship opportunity, but she is just as proud of the work behind them. Moses is always thinking about what he can improve before the next game. If he misses a field goal, he thinks about how to make that kick the next time. He continues to train with Orner and works locally with Tim Anderson at Original Strength Institute. Wilkes has stayed in his corner, too.

Moses looks forward  to joining the NC State football team in the spring of 2027 after graduating from Willow Spring in December 2026. He wants to become one of the best college kickers in the nation and win a Lou Groza Award. First, he has a senior season to finish at Willow Spring, where his younger brother Sutton also dresses for varsity as a backup kicker.

After years of driving Moses to practices, games and camps, Stella is grateful that the next place he chose feels close in more ways than one.

“NC State feels like home to him,” she said. “I’m happy that he found somewhere where he feels like he’s home.”

I had two final questions for Moses. Did he want to break North Carolina’s high school field goal record with a 62-yard kick? And did he want to play in the NFL someday?

His answers were a resounding yes and yes. And he plans to have a lot of fun trying.