WS Chronicle

Glenn High School has found their new leader of the boys wrestling team. Larry Barron, a former state champion at Parkland High School, will lead the Bobcats on the mat moving forward.

Barron wrestled under legendary coach Maurice Atwood at Parkland High School and has taken that knowledge with him following graduation. He has coached in the private sector for several years and this is his first head coaching position in a school setting, so he is ready to get to work.

“Having an athletic director that is a wrestling coach and understands the sport of wrestling, that probably was my number one seller, if I’m going to be honest,” Barron said about why he chose to take the position. “Having an AD that I know has my back and understands what it takes to really build a legacy level program, because I am not here to just win it once or twice, that’s not how I operate.”

The previous year, Barron had been an assistant wrestling coach at Reynolds under Tim Pittman. Barron had initially applied for the head coaching position with the Demons but was not selected.  

“Coming in, I didn’t have any high school coaching experience per se, even though I had been coaching for several years, I didn’t have any high school experience, so they gave me the assistant coaching job,” said Barron. “We took that program and we turned that entire program around by establishing a culture within the school around wrestling.”

The opportunity for the position from Glenn came about for Barron when he received a call from Athletics Director Joe McCormick. McCormick asked if Barron was interested in taking over as head coach, but because he had been building a program at Reynolds with Pittman, Barron was hesitant about leaving. 

“It sounded very appealing, but I had been building with my wrestlers over here at Reynolds and I have a great relationship with Coach Pittman, and I needed some time to think about it,” he said. “I am not the type that has an opportunity present itself and I just say yes and leave everybody I had been working with.”

Barron comes in with an established record as a wrestler, as well as a coach. He won multiple state championships with the Mustangs and once he began coaching, he built some great programs at various gyms.

His first program was Warrior One Wrestling back in 2011. He now works with K Vegas Elite Wrestling out of Kernersville. He wanted to start a youth wrestling program to give the younger kids an opportunity to begin wrestling before they get to high school, because Forsyth County does not have any wrestling programs inside of elementary or middle schools.

Barron did not wait long to fill out his coaching staff. His assistant coaches will consist of Jesse Leonard, Drew Turner, Jamal Brannon and Lamont Atwater. He feels his coaching staff is one of the best around and will give his wrestlers a leg up on their competition. Barron has also reached out to his wrestlers and has given them the option to work out during the offseason to obtain some additional work before the season starts.

“I want to train all of my wrestlers to become elite,” he said. “I want to build a culture and I want to turn Kernersville into a wrestling town. I am going to paint it orange. I have fundraising ideas to raise funds for summer camps, seminars and to travel to different states to hit tough tournaments to get real competition, so when we come back here, we know what it looks like.”

Once he made the decision that he was going to take the job at Glenn, Barron had the tough job of informing the wrestlers and members of the staff at Reynolds that he was leaving. He says that was one of the toughest things he has ever had to do, because he is a loyal person and didn’t want it to seem as though he was giving up on a commitment.

Barron says he did not take the decision lightly. He says he pondered over his decision for nearly a week before he decided to take the position. One of the things that swayed his decision was several wrestlers from his K Vegas Elite program attend Glenn, so there was some familiarity there.

“I felt like a boy that just lost his puppy or his best friend,” Barron said about how he felt leaving the team at Reynolds. “It was tough to be happy, because I was sad. I didn’t want to be that coach that sells you a dream and then disappears when an opportunity comes my way.”

Barron says he is a dreamer, so he has some lofty goals for next season. He wants his starting lineup to have a winning record, a deep run in the playoffs, be the top team in the conference, and earn conference coach of the year.  

“I would honestly say, a winning record for my starting lineup, winning record for the team as a whole, and getting my seniors into college to wrestle, that’s a successful season for me,” he says. “I can say all of the dreamy stuff, because that’s how I am. You’re not going to tell me that I am not going to win the state championship this year.”

Barron says he knows wrestling is not an attractive sport to many African American kids nowadays, but one of his goals is to make the sport more appealing to them and bring them into wrestling.