School: Norristown
Wrestling, Baseball
Favorite athlete: Michael Vick
Favorite tem: New York Yankees
Favorite memory competing in sports: “Winning Sectionals my sophomore year”
Funniest thing that happened while competing in sports: “Watching my teammate come into a tournament after being given a four-pound weight allowance and still being two pounds overweight.”
Music on iPod: Lil Wayne, Meek Millz
Future plans: “I plan to go to a four-year college, sort of leaning towards East Stroudsburg, and majoring in physical therapy/athletic training. Good possibility I will want to wrestle also but haven’t made the final decision yet.”
Words to live by: “Keep your head up when times get rough. Never give up.”
One goal before turning 30: “Hopefully having a steady job and making lots of money!”
One thing people don’t know about me: “I feel I’m an all-around pretty good person in terms of academically, athletically and personally. I live my life with a positive attitude and enjoy every bit of it.”
At 6-0, 145 pounds, Stephen Parker looks every bit the part of a basketball player.
But appearances can be deceiving.
The Norristown senior doesn’t play basketball – he gave that sport up years ago. Instead, he is a wrestler, a very good wrestler.
“He’s unorthodox – very wiry, very tall,” coach Mark Harner said. “He’s not much of a physical specimen. He’s very thin, but he uses his height to get leverage on opponents.”
And Parker has been extremely successful.
Last weekend, he surpassed the 100-win mark for a stellar high school career while compiling an impressive 5-0 mark at the Bill Fretz Duals at Perkiomen Valley High School.
Making Parker’s showing particularly impressive was the fact that he entered the tournament with a 1-3 record.
“I wasn’t doing much offensively,” he said of his slow start. “I was basically waiting for them to do something, and that cost me.
“I took a more aggressive approach at this tournament, which made the match turn around.”
The senior captain’s finest hour came in his 5-1 win over Central Bucks East’s Jarrett Sanders, who defeated Parker 3-2 one week earlier and also had a win over Parker last season.
“It felt good,” Parker said. “I think I wrestled really smart that match. I think I strategically beat him, and it felt good because you can do that in wrestling.”
“He was a little more aggressive,” Harner said. “By nature, he’s a defensive wrestler. He needs to be a little more offensive. A lot of his matches are close. He lets kids stay in the match.”
But Parker usually finishes on the high end of the score.
The Norristown senior is actually a convert from football, and he began wrestling in fourth grade when Harner was his 65 Bandits football team coach.
“Football was my sport,” Parker said. “I thought that’s what I wanted to play. I stopped playing by sophomore year. I just remember I didn’t like it anymore.”
That’s not to say the Eagle senior developed an immediate love affair with wrestling. He didn’t.
“At first, I didn’t really like it,” he said. “At the first tournament, I lost both of my matches, and I didn’t take the whole losing thing too well. Since wrestling is an individual sport, it felt like it was all me, and I was so used to playing team sports. I had to get used to the losing thing.”
It wasn’t long before Parker began experiencing success.
“When I got to middle school and started being successful, that’s when I started liking it,” he said. “Ever since then, I loved it. I dropped basketball and stuck with wrestling.”
Harner is glad he did.
“He was a late bloomer,” the Eagles’ coach said. “He struggled until he was in eighth or ninth grade, and he started to take it more seriously.
“He started to turn the corner, and he had a really nice freshman year.”
Parker’s transformation on the mat began when he changed his approach.
“During my midget years, when I wrestled, I kind of maintained the same skill the whole time,” he said. “I didn’t really try to add new things. That’s what my coach tells me all the time – I have to try new things.
“Once I opened up and started trying new parts of wrestling, new techniques, that’s when I started finding my own stuff and learning how to do better.”
Parker served notice that he was a force to be reckoned with while compiling a 25-16 record as a freshman. As a sophomore and junior, he was a sectional champion and regional qualifier.
He is the 13th Norristown wrestler to surpass the 100-win mark, and if he continues on his present pace, he could finish in the school’s top five all-time win leaders.
In the spring, Parker takes his skills onto the baseball diamond.
“Baseball starts (workouts) around Thanksgiving, but my coach knows he has me around March,” he said.
Parker is more than just an outstanding athlete. He’s also an outstanding student. He takes honors classes with his sights set on a career as a physical therapist/athletic trainer.
“I had no idea what I wanted to do until last year,” he said. “We always took surveys in schools about what we wanted to do.
“I want to stay within sports. I took anatomy and physiology, and I became interested in it, and being with sports as an athletic trainer just seemed cool.”
Parker has already been accepted at York College and East Stroudsburg. He is leaning toward East Stroudsburg since it has a physical therapy/athletic training major, but it might mean the end of his wrestling career.
“They’re Division One in wrestling, and the major I have is really intense,” said Parker, who last year was an honorable mention academic all-state selection last year. “I love sports, I love being an athlete, and I love the competition.
“I definitely want to do something – maybe if there’s an intramural team I’ll go out for that, but grades definitely come first.”
College is still nine months down the road, and Parker has the little matter of his final high school wrestling season to take care of. But wrestling is just one piece of a full life for Parker.
“He’s a good student, and he’s very well liked,” Harner said. “He’s just a great kid.”
