Minium: ODU Football Building Its Offensive Line Around Zach Barlev, A Big Man With A Big Heart

By Harry Minium

NORFOLK, Va. – Scott and Jean Barlev raised their two sons to be good people. Participate in sports because it will teach you teamwork and discipline, they preached, but if you make a poor grade, you’re done with athletics for a while.

Be good to others, and treat everyone, especially women, with respect. And whatever you do, be loyal, to your coaches, your friends, your school, and especially your family.

Zach Barlev, their youngest son, is a chip off the old block when it comes to the lessons his parents taught him. He’s incredibly kind and nice to those around him.

And, oh, what a fantastic athlete. He lettered in five sports at Plainfield East High in Bolingbrook, Illinois, where he was named Male Athlete of the Year as a senior. He landed a football scholarship to the University of Illinois of the Big Ten, a dream come true for a young man raised about 45 minutes south of Chicago.

He played on special teams in 25 Illinois games as a freshman and sophomore and got a few snaps on the line of scrimmage. But the 6-foot-4, 318-pound offensive lineman realized after his sophomore season that he would never start.

“We taught him that once you commit to something, you see it to the end, that you don’t quit halfway through,” said Jean, his mother.

But his parents counseled him to make the painful decision to enter the transfer portal.

“He gave it 110 percent,” said his father, Scott. “He did well at Illinois. He made friends there. The coaches really liked him.

“But he wasn’t going to start. It was hard for him, but he needed to go somewhere else.”

With the blessings of his Illini coaches and teammates, Zach entered the portal and wound up nearly 1,000 miles away from home at Old Dominion University.

Zach has made the most of his second chance. He started last season as a junior and graded out No. 1 among ODU’s offensive lineman. And he did that on a team that led the Sun Belt Conference in rushing.

He was a third-team All-Sun Belt selection at the end of the season and was named to the All-Sun Belt preseason first team last week.

He’s impressed not just with his prowess on the field, but his character off the field. Once, when the offensive line needed a pick-me-up, he came dressed to a team meeting as “Mr. Incredible” from the Disney Pixar movie The Incredibles, from head to toe, mask included.

“The guys could not stop laughing,” said third-year offensive line coach Alex Huettel.

“He’s got an incredible sense of humor.”

He also has a unique touchdown celebration. It’s not quite a back flip. “It’s more like an athletic cartwheel,” Barlev said. But it shows up will on TV cameras.

“I tell him to have fun,” Huettel said. “But don’t get hurt.”

As ODU begins fall practice on Wednesday, Barlev leads an offensive line that is clearly the best since Ricky Rahne was named head coach in 2019.

The deep and experienced O line is one of the major reasons there are such high expectations this season for the Monarchs.

Barlev will start at left tackle, and he’s the prefect guy to play on the “Blind Side” of quarterback Colton Joseph – he allowed only one sack last season. Stephon Dubose-Bourne, a 6-4, 315-pound fifth-year senior from Chesapeake’s Indian River High, returns at right tackle after starting most of the last two years.

Maarten Woodsma (6-5, 315), a redshirt junior from Chesapeake’s Oscar Smith High, and senior Skyler Grant (6-3, 310) started part-time at guard. Senior Elijah Hoskin (6-3, 298) started three games before suffering a season-ending injury.

ODU also recruited well. Ryan Joyce, a 6-5, 305-pound senior from Stockton, New Jersey, begins summer practice No. 1 on the depth chart at center. He transferred from Fordham, where he started three seasons and where Offensive Coordinator Kevin Decker and Huettel both coached before coming to Norfolk.

Virginia Tech transfer Griffin Duggan (6-5, 295), a Suffolk native, and Logan Cox (6-4, 328), a transfer from Kansas State, will also see playing time.

Huettel said this is the best group he’s coached for the Monarchs and says Barlev is clearly leader of the pack.

“We’ve got so much more depth than we’ve ever had,” Huettel said. “We’ve had more leadership than we’ve ever had. These guys all root for each other. They’re more interested in everyone getting better than in who will start.”

Barlev, he said, is the clear leader of the O line.

“He’s everything you would want in a football player,” Huettel said. “He’s driven, he’s motivated, he’s disciplined.

“He’s one of those guys you can build an offensive line around. He’s enhanced our room significantly. The guys have gravitated towards him.

“He’s not a vocal leader. He’s a hard-working leader. He came in here last year, grabbed the bull by the horns, and got everyone in shape. If I ask him to do anything, he’ll do it. He just wants to be successful.”

Barlev and his older brother, Jacob, drank in the lessons their parents imparted. Jacob, 27, was a college baseball player who is now serving as a first responder in St. Louis, where he works as a paramedic.

“They were both really good kids who wanted to do the right thing,” Jean said. “They didn’t go out drinking at night. They didn't smoke.”

Zach is still dating his high school sweetheart, Megan McDonough, who was also an athlete – she was a competitive archer for the University of Kentucky club team. She begins work on a Master’s degree at Kentucky this fall.

Zach began playing tackle football at five years old but was so big, he had to play up a league or two against older kids.

“I know some people think my parents were crazy for signing me up to play football at five,” Barlev said. “But I think it made me a better man.”

He was unfortunate in that the pandemic occurred during his senior year and the state of Illinois postponed high school football until the spring. Golf was the only sport Plainfield East played in the fall, so he went out for the golf team and made it.

He played basketball, baseball and soccer and, as a senior, even participated on the bowling team. He wasn’t very good at bowling, nor at first on the links.

“But he’s just so competitive,” Scott said. “He wants to excel at everything he does.”

Bolingbrook is a village of 84,000 people and a great place to raise a family. East Plainfield High School is surrounded by corn fields.

“We were a mile from the school and our boys would get on their bikes and ride to practice,” Scott said.  

“Our rule was that if you play sports, you don’t have to get a job, that we’ll support you as long as you play sports and make good grades. We felt like they would learn so much more from sports.”

Wrestling was Zach's best sport. He finished sixth in the state as a junior and was ranked third in the state as a senior. But because wrestling and football were both played in the spring, he missed his senior year of wrestling.

Yet he managed to throw the shot put for the track and field team.

Early-on, he committed to play at Bowling Green. In part because of the restrictions imposed during the pandemic, recruiting was all done remotely, and Illinois did not come through with a scholarship until late in the process.

Once he signed at Illinois, he showed his true character. He had already received a partial scholarship to Illinois as Male Athlete of the Year. He arranged for a high school classmate to receive the scholarship to play baseball for the Illini.

“He came to me and said, ‘Dad, this is what we should do,’” Scott said. “He did that one his own.”

When it came time to transfer from Illinois, he got offers from a ton of Mid-American Conference schools.

“But I wanted to get out of the Midwest, I wanted to get away for my last two seasons,” he said. “The Midwest, it’s just so cold there. I was looking for warm weather and a good program.”

He found both at ODU.

“Once I got in contact with coach Rahne, the first time I talked to him, it just felt like this is the head coach I wanted to play for,” he said. “And play by the beach? Yeah, I love that.”

Huettel said Barlev “has pro potential. He’s very, very driven and that’s his goal. He’s going to get opportunities. He won’t play at tackle in the NFL, but he could play guard or center. He can excel at center because he’s such a smart football player.”

Asked last week during Sun Belt Media Days in New Orleans about his pro future, Barlev said he’s trying not to think about it. There are nearly five weeks of practice ahead, followed by 12 regular-season games, and, hopefully, a postseason as well.

He is adhering to Rahne’s 1-0 mentality, that dictates you don’t look past your next opponent or even your next practice, that you focus on the moment.

You can forgive his family for looking ahead to ODU's opener at Indiana on Aug. 30. Bloomington, Indiana is just a four-hour drive from Bolingbrook and nearly 40 family members plan to be there.

Scott and Jean have attended every game he's played and will attend every game this season. They joined the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation largely to get a tailgate parking pass, and often party with The Monarchists, a group of ODU boosters, before home games.

Their son, for one, is focused on this week's start of practice. 

“I thought our offensive line was really close last year,” he said. “But the jump we’ve made to this year is just insane. I feel like we’re all literally brothers. The amount of trust we have for each other is amazing.

“We’re ready to go to work. If we focus on one day at a time and work hard, we can be a really good team.

“Yes, I was a preseason first-team pick. And I know some people are expecting us to do well this season. 

“But all of that means nothing. It’s all guess work. We’ve got to put in the work. And I know we’re going to do that. This team is so determined to go out and win.”

Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram