Ryan Parker, left, with coach Bill McMahan
photo by John Shearer
Like the discus he has thrown to championship results, Baylor School senior Ryan Parker’s athletic career has certainly been well rounded.
It has reached for the skies, too.
In this era when the majority of high school athletes focus on a single sport, he has not only competed in three sports, but he has also thrived in them.
He was named the Division II-AA Mr. Football recipient as a lineman last fall, he won his fourth straight state championship in wrestling this winter, and he is trying to defend his state title in the discus this spring in track and field.
At a school that has produced a number of excellent athletes dating back decades, his name is already being mentioned among the greats.
“The day he is eligible to be nominated for the Baylor Sports Hall of Fame, he will be a unanimous vote,” said his track coach, Bill McMahan, who has observed many Baylor athletes as a former student and longtime teacher and coach.
“He is as good an athlete as anyone who has been here in the last 10 years, anyway.”
His storied career at Baylor is now coming to a close, with only the region and state meets remaining later this month before he heads off to West Point this summer to play football – and possibly other sports.
As he amicably chatted one day last week before practice, he appeared to be already getting mentally ready for his career at Army. He was sporting an Army T-shirt and said he was breaking in some Army boots.
He already appears to be comfortable mastering the Army style of looking someone he is meeting in the eye in a respectful manner. And he seemed genuinely interested in wondering what publication this particular interview was for, despite all the attention he has already received.
As he talked, it also became apparent that he still has some unfinished business at Baylor athletically before he leaves, or at least one particular achievement that would be icing on the cake. “I hope to make the state in both the shot put and discus as well as beat John Hannah’s school record at 171 feet in the discus,” he said of the former Baylor multi-sport athlete from the 1960s, who is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “I’ve beaten it in practice, I’ve just got to get it in a meet.”
According to the TSSAA website, Parker won the state Division II discus title last spring with a toss of 164 feet, 7 inches.
Regardless of what happens, he said he has enjoyed his time greatly at Baylor. In fact, he gives all his coaches credit and said they have been the secret to any success he has been able to achieve. Besides coach McMahan and all the assistants, that also includes head football coach Phil Massey and head wrestling coach Ben Nelson.
“Of course you have to put in the hard work, but really it’s all the coaching I’ve gotten here at Baylor that’s helped me get to the next level,” he said.
The son of Bill and Samantha Parker of Hixson came to Baylor in the sixth grade after his parents moved to Chattanooga. He spent his younger years in Knoxville thinking he might end up attending Knoxville Catholic High School.
He was drawn to Baylor due to the encouragement of Virginia Anne Manson, a member of the Baylor admissions office and the mother of some former Baylor wrestlers, and his AAU wrestling coach, Mike Sutherland, he said.
His mother was a cheerleader at Florida Atlantic University and his father had once tried out for what is now known as the Miami Marlins baseball team before suffering an injury, so playing sports came naturally.
And focusing on just one sport was never an option that interested Ryan.
“I like to do a lot due to the fact that my parents have always pushed me to do multiple sports to the point where if I’m not doing something, I just bounce off the walls with energy,” he said with a laugh while sitting in the Heywood Stadium track stands at Baylor. “I feel like I always have to be doing something.”
He said he even has trouble figuring out what his favorite sport is.
“That’s a great question,” he said. “It’s more of a seasonal thing. If you ask me during football season, it’s football. If you ask me during wrestling, it’s wrestling. It just depends on the day.”
But while the sports and seasons are different, his focus of giving it all has always been the same throughout the year. He said he believes in extra work in the morning or after an afternoon practice, and he constantly tries to keep himself motivated by thinking about how he can outdo the competition.
“I think about it as what the opponent or whomever I’m playing is doing, and then doing that same amount of work the coaches tell me to do. And then I use that as motivation to work out even harder,” he said. “I want to do more than whatever they are doing to prepare.”
Coach McMahan said he has been impressed with his work ethic. “He is driven,” he said. “He is just really driven. He works so hard and he’s not one of these guys who plays like one sport all the time.”
Parker also enjoys giving back by helping everyone from younger athletes to Senior Olympians through some volunteer coaching. And that has made him think that he might enjoy being a coach fulltime somewhere down the road.
But for now, he has an appointment at West Point and a likely career in the Army for at least a few years.
This comes after he initially had other plans. He had grown up being inspired athletically by the movie, “Rudy,” about the walk-on who gets to play briefly at Notre Dame, so he dreamed of playing collegiately for the Fighting Irish. His football exploits last fall – including being a star in the somewhat surprising 38-14 win over rival McCallie -- led to an invitation from the Notre Dame coaches to be a preferred walk-on there.
However, the Army opportunity opened up, so he will report for boot camp and training there in late June and play football this fall.
As one might expect, he is not fearful of what lies ahead.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I went up there for the spring game recently and I got to meet all my new teammates and all the new incoming commits and I just felt right at home.”
Besides the full scholarship offer, part of the reason he picked Army over Notre Dame was that he is hoping he might also get to participate in another varsity sport there, possibly track and field.
He will actually not be the first good athlete from Baylor to be involved with the Army football program. 1944 graduate Joe Steffy won the Outland Trophy, given to the nation’s best interior lineman, as an Army player in 1947, while Herman Hickman from the Baylor class of 1928 was an assistant coach there after starring at Tennessee.
A good student at Baylor, Parker said he is thinking about majoring in either mechanical engineering or biomedical engineering at West Point.
Based on his enjoyment playing challenging sports at Baylor and his love for training, an obvious question is whether he would like to one day be an elite Army Ranger.
“My parents don’t like that idea, but I would love to be a Ranger,” he said with a smile.
Regardless, he has already earned another title at Baylor – winner.
“He’s a four-time state wrestling champion, a two-time all-state player in football and the most valuable defensive player in the league both years in football,” said coach McMahan. “And he’s a state champion in discus.”
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Ryan Parker
photo by John Shearer