Full-time Florida scientist Canyon Barry chases gold in 3×3 at Paris Olympics – NBC 6 South Florida

Canyon Barry is a part-time basketball player.

His full-time job is as a systems engineer for a defense and aerospace company in Florida.

Barry, who will be hitting the track at the Paris Games in search of a 3×3 gold medal for the U.S. men’s team, has a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in nuclear engineering. So is he a rocket scientist? A nuclear physicist?

“Scientist, engineer, problem solver, take your pick,” Barry said with a light laugh and a wink.

Barry keeps secret exactly what he does with his work at aerospace company L3Harris Technologies.

“I’ve spoken to L3Harris and they’ve said we shouldn’t give too much detail about the programs we’re working on for approval and security reasons,” he said. “But we have great international compliance and trade security. (And) they’ve briefed me on all of those things and just said let’s leave it at systems engineering.”

When he’s not preparing for the Olympics with teammates Jimmer Fredette, Kareem Maddox and Dylan Travis, the son of Hall of Famer and NBA champion Rick Barry can often be found behind his laptop working on projects for L3Harris Technologies.

With the team traveling internationally extensively in the run-up to the Paris Games, Barry found himself joining Zoom calls in the middle of the night and doing his daily work while the rest of the team slept.

Barry, 30, appreciates the support he has received from the company during his preparation for the Olympics. He will be on holiday from work during the games so he can fully focus on the hunt for gold.

“I’m really, really happy to work for that company and what they’ve allowed me to do,” Barry said. “And I also think they really fit the Olympic spirit, because they protect our American warfighters overseas and it’s really cool to bring that American spirit.”

Barry was interested in science from a young age. Despite coming from a basketball family, his mother Lynn Barry considered studying the most important thing in their home.

“She always said, ‘You never know what’s going to happen in sports in terms of injuries or when your last game is,'” he said. “So having … a career that you’re passionate about and being able to have an identity outside of sports means a lot to me. Because now, when the ball stops bouncing, I know I have a passion and a job that I can go back to and find fulfillment in and really enjoy for the rest of my life.”

While Barry’s teammates appreciate his intelligence and attention to detail on the field, they sometimes tire of him constantly correcting them off it.

“That’s never fun,” Fredette said. “He’s always trying to say, no, this is how you say it, or this is the right way to do it. So he’s always making sure we’re on our P’s and Q’s.”

Yet, above all, it is love between Fredette and Barry.

“You see when he plays on the field, he has a similar mindset to how he likes to play the game,” Fredette said. “So, he’s obviously one of my best friends — I love the guy — and don’t tell him I said it, but he’s super smart.”

While his scientific mind is most often used for that top-secret government work, he has also used physics to justify an unconventional part of his game. His father famously shot underhand free throws, or “granny shots,” and he has done the same throughout his career.

“There’s a lot of physics papers that say it’s a more repeatable motion,” Barry said. “When you’re shooting overhand free throws, your elbow and your shoulder all have to fire at the right time and move inward to create the right trajectory and launch angle and arc. Unlike an underhand shot, it’s really just your shoulder.

“So with one joint you really simplify the shot.”

Barry’s family is with him in Paris as he tries to help the U.S. men achieve a better result than they did at the previous Olympics. The men failed to qualify in their sporting debut at the Tokyo Games — though the U.S. women won gold.

He will also have a room full of scientists supporting him in Melbourne, Florida. His colleagues threw him a send-off ice cream party before he left for France, where everyone wore T-shirts they had made in his honor.

“It said, ‘Go Canyon,’ and then there was a picture of the Eiffel Tower with a satellite orbiting it instead of the basketball,” he said.

And when he returns to Florida, he hopes to bring back some special hardware.

“I would love nothing more than to come back to that office with a gold medal,” Barry said, “and have them all feel it and take pictures with it.”