Barry Scores on the Court and in the Classroom

Marco Island Academy’s star student-athlete Kathryn Barry's earliest childhood memories aren’t of shooting three-pointers or riding her bicycle. They’re of fighting for her life.

“All my earliest memories were in hospitals,” said Kathryn Barry, MIA’s valedictorian and Winged Foot Scholar-Athlete Award representative. "But Dad says it gave me rose-colored glasses. He said that after I went through all that, I kind of had a different outlook. But I don't know. It's all I remember. It kind of happened gradually. My white blood cells started attacking my organs. My red blood cells were not carrying enough oxygen, and so my protein levels plummeted, and it all kind of coalesced. So one day, I was riding my bike and I just passed out. Conked out. I was in a coma for three days."

Barry was stricken with a life-threatening immunological illness when she was just four years old. She remained in the hospital for the better part of two years. The daughter of two pharmacists, it was her mother, Kim Barry, who may have saved her young daughter’s life.

“After a couple years,” Barry said, "it was actually my mom who kind of figured out what was going on with me, and she worked with the doctors. And from that point forward, I kind of just got better. It's kind of funny because they don't really know exactly what happened. They just realized that the Epstein-Barr virus attacked my system and it caused a bunch of different things to happen. So basically, in a metaphorical sense, it punched holes in my duodenum. So all these proteins that I was ingesting were leaking out into my bloodstream, and so it was causing a bunch of chaos. But these proteins that were leaking were mostly animal-based proteins. And so they're like getting in my blood. And my body was saying, 'Oh, these are bad.' So that's where I basically formed my allergies to egg and meat.”

Those allergies continue to be part of Barry’s life. But, like her dad, Travis, says, Kathryn Barry sees the silver lining in her food allergies with her rose-colored glasses.

“It's kind of forced our family to become health nuts,” Barry said. "And so we've really been health conscious after that. We love exercising and eating right. Even though it seems like a dark experience, it's actually been very positive, and it's really kind of changed the trajectory of our whole lives."

Barry remembers her mother being by her side in the hospital.

"It's funny because I actually remember lying in bed in the hospital and not being able to move,” Barry said. "And mom was just always clicking away on the computer, always looking, going through books. Basically, she just started learning about the immune system and about everything. Her background on that was very, very helpful. She spent countless hours just researching, working with doctors and helping to figure it out. And honestly, I'm not sure if I'd be here without her.”

As a six-year-old, Barry gradually began to get better.

“A big weight was lifted off and we kind of just could see the end in sight,” she said. "I just kept getting better and better and better. You could just see an upward trajectory, which is fun.”

While Barry isn’t following in her parents’ footsteps in terms of pharmacy school, her infirmity has motivated her to help people who find themselves in the position she was in as a child.

“I really hope to be just a small part in any sort of breakthrough or discovery and honestly, if we can make any sort of little progress, it'll be huge.”

Barry will attend Rice University in Houston. Her older brother Kevin is entering his junior year at Rice.

"I will be majoring in biochemistry,” Barry said. "And hopefully, when I'm there, I'm going to be pursuing some undergraduate research, possibly at Rice or the Texas Medical Center. Rice is really known for having great undergraduate research, and also their biochemistry program is just untouched. It's amazing and the people there are fantastic. I think they're some of the nicest people I've ever met, too. So I think I'm going to be surrounded with a whole bunch of great people. So I'm very, very excited for that. And Kevin's there too, so it'll be easy to integrate.”

Barry has always looked up to her brother, who was co-valedictorian with Johnny Watt at MIA and arguably the program’s all-time scorer with over 2,000 points in his high school career. Sometimes following a high-achieving sibling can be daunting.  Not the case with the Barrys.

“Some people are like, 'Oh, I don't like to be in people's shadow' or whatever. I'm very, very happy to be going behind Kevin. He's a great example. He's the best, honestly. I call him the best brother ever because he is. Every night I tell him that.”

The Barry family has lived in the same two-bedroom condominium in South Seas Tower Two for Kathryn’s entire life. The condo has a commanding view of Marco Beach and beyond. But the Barrys had to make some things happen for this living arrangement to work. Kevin and Kathryn have been roommates throughout childhood.

"Me and Kevin share a room,” Barry said. "I get the top bunk, which is slightly smaller, but it's fine. So we've grown up with the same bunk bed all our time. And honestly, I think that's why we're so close. We live in a little tiny apartment. So I think that's why we all get along so well. We all mesh so well. And yeah, I say my brother is definitely one of my best friends. I will always look up to him. He's so interesting and fun, and he's so creative and so driven. I strive to be him.”

As Barry says goodbye to her academic and athletic career at MIA, she does so with fondness.

"I thought it was a magical experience,” Barry said. "I love all the people at my school and all the administration, all the teachers, they honestly just make the moment that much better. My classmates are some of the nicest and most caring and passionate people I've ever met, and so they've really made an impression on my life. I just feel very, very lucky to be part of that school and to have gone all the way through. It was a lot of fun.”

Part of the fun for Barry was playing basketball for the Rays. Father Travis was her head coach. Most mornings they were in the gym well before school started, working on Kathryn’s game.

"I've been doing sports a long time,” Barry said, "and I've always done it with dad. So all the way along, he's been coaching me in basically everything. He's always been involved. And honestly, I wouldn't want to have it any other way. We go out and do runs together. We play basketball together in the mornings. We've always done everything together. And it's a lot of fun because we get up at like 5:00 in the morning to start our day and to be very productive. We go play basketball over at the gym early in the morning. And the teachers come and they're like, 'What are you doing here?’ And we're like, ‘Just shooting hoops.'"

The father-daughter team works on shooting, passing, dribbling, defense.

“We do all different things,” Barry said. "We even play a little bit of one-on-one, which gets a little bit heated. He's pretty good, I do have to say. Very, very good."

So does daughter ever beat dad?

“Yep,” Barry said. "Well, we give each other good competition, but I do have to say, sometimes he's great. But honestly, it's mostly for fun. We're always laughing and always something funny happens."

Barry has good memories of her high school basketball career, which includes two Paradise Coast Athletic Conference championships. Barry finishes with three school scoring records: 1,271 career points, 472 points in a single season (her senior year), and 38 points in a game (also this year). She was Marco Island Academy’s representative for the county’s Winged Foot Scholar-Athlete Award, given to the top student-athlete in the county.

"One of the best experiences of my life with dad coaching,” Barry said of her high school career. “All the girls on my team are just fantastic, and I've been blessed with these amazing people that I've gotten to play with. The whole experience has just been great. I have so many fun memories and funny memories, too, that I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life. I really owe everything to it and to my dad and to my teammates. It's a team sport. I can't do it without them. They've played such an integral part. We all get along. I swear, I think our team is the least argumentative team in the whole area, which I think is so great. We're always happy, slapping high fives. Every year it always just seems to get better and everyone always seems to get better together. And that's what I really, really love about our team.”

While Barry will be concentrating on academics at Rice, she sees basketball as always being a part of her life.

"I'm pretty sure they put a basketball in my crib,” she said with a smile. "So yeah, it has gone really far back. But sports and academics have really been my life. It's sports, academics, family, friends. And I wouldn't want to have it any other way. It's been a fantastic balance because I feel like it's really kind of created who I am. It's really rounded out my personality. All the people I've met along the way, all the funny instances, and all the great memories have really shaped me. All my teachers, my dad, all my coaches have really made a huge impact on me."