On Jan. 3, Bailey Barnhard delivered the best scoring performance of her college career.
The 6-foot-1 San Diego State women’s basketball sophomore forward scored a career-high 21 points on 10-of-14 shooting in a road win in Laramie over Wyoming.
Back home in 4S Ranch, her father, Brooks Barnhard, watched it unfold the way he often does when he can’t be in the stands — live-streamed from his living room on the Mountain West app.
“I’m watching more as a dad than as a basketball coach, or someone who understands the game,” Brooks Barnhard said. “I just want what’s best for her, and I want her to be successful. You’re sort of on the edge of your seat in that regard. I want the team to win, but I’m watching how she’s performing first and foremost. My eyes don’t really leave my daughter.”
“[My dad] reminds me to have fun,” Bailey Barnhard added. “It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the pressure of basketball, especially at the collegiate level, but learning from somebody who’s already been through it and dealt with the same experiences I’m going through now is really helpful. It gives me a different perspective I can relate to, and it reminds me why I started playing this game — because it’s fun.”
The game runs in the family. Bailey’s older sister, Brynn, starred at Del Norte before playing at Gordon College. Bailey scored more than 2,000 points, also at Del Norte, earning multiple All-CIF selections and conference honors.
Back in the 1980s, her dad led Escondido High to its first 20-win season as a junior before playing at the University of San Diego, where he averaged more than 14 points per game as a senior in 1994.
“She is way more skilled than I was,” said Brooks Barnhard, now a high school coach. “I could hardly put the ball on the floor — in college, I probably did it five times total. I was either catch-and-shoot or a post player. Bailey has the ability to attack the basket from the perimeter really well; I feel like she’s a much better three-level scorer than I ever was.”
As an Aztec freshman, Bailey Barnhard came off the bench, appearing in 28 games, scoring 2 points per game for a 25-win Mountain West Championship team that advanced to the NCAA Tournament.
This season, she has started all 14 games for the 11-3 Aztecs, averaging more than 7 points and 5 rebounds per game.
“In comparison of height to the men’s game, we’re kind of around the same size, but I think that he was more of a shooter,” she said. “I’m more physical. He tended to be more on the three-point line, and I drive a bit more, but a lot of stuff I learned from him.”
In 2002, Brooks Barnhard launched San Diego PBC, a program providing basketball camps, clinics and private lessons, and has spent more than a decade as head varsity boys coach at Maranatha Christian, guiding the team to a CIF section championship in 2021.
“Bailey is a tenacious rebounder, not afraid of contact and can score well in the post,” SDSU Associate Head Coach Kellie Lewis said. “Her game can be whatever she wants it to be. What stands out about having a parent who understands the process — that it’s a marathon, not a
sprint — is he helps guide her through it without placing unrealistic expectations on her at an early stage of a career.”
“There’s so much influence you have in these kids’ lives,” Brooks Barnhard added. “When I started coaching in 2002, I thought it was all about teaching fundamentals. But you quickly realize it’s about more than basketball — it’s about life skills, care and helping kids grow.
“Basketball gives you the chance to co-parent in a way, to guide them through emotions, teach
them to control themselves, and prepare them for adulthood. Every practice, every game, there are teachable moments to help them become better fathers, neighbors, husbands — better people. That’s what I love.”
Brooks Barnhard said his approach to parenting hoopers— partly shaped by his own parents’
hands-off style when he played youth sports — was to give Bailey access to the training available through him while maintaining distance.
As a fourth grader, he placed her on a boys’ team in his San Diego PBC club, where she spent several years.
“Maybe it was my manipulative way to help her, put her in a position to get the level of training that didn’t come directly from dad, more indirectly,” he reflected. “I put her on a boys’ team with her friends. She wasn’t going to get any special treatment — she had to earn her spot. There were challenges being a girl playing with boys; you have to prove yourself. She had the skill to do it and she loved it because she was growing with her friends and constantly proving, ‘I belong.’”
“I just became better,” Bailey Barnhard added. “The results I got playing with the boys weren’t the same as I would have gotten playing with girls. Athletically, it was the best choice — I went into high school able to compete right away, being quicker and more physical. It’s something
my parents did for me, and I think it was the right decision at the time.”
On the court, their skill sets may differ, but off the court, as dad explained, there’s a distinctly overlapping Barnhard temperament.
“With her personality, she was set on trying to prove to her [male] teammates, to her coach, that she belonged,” Brooks Barnhard remembered, before pivoting to his own basketball origins. “It was very similar in that I had something to prove early on.”
Bailey Barnhard returns to action Saturday when SDSU (11-3, 5-0 MWC) travels to Utah State. Three days later, her dad will coach Maranatha Christian against La Jolla Country Day, continuing the family’s shared basketball journey.
