I actually do have a small, somewhat humorous anecdote regarding Parker . . .
A probably lesser-known tidbit about Parker is that he spent a short time in Maine as a youth. I was assistant-coaching my younger brother's junior high team, and we ended up facing Parker that year. Mind you, this was mid-coast Maine in the 1990s -- blacks in my particular community were virtually non-existent outside adoption. Given that backdrop, and that Parker was already a physical specimen, all our middle-weights were driving themselves crazy at weigh-ins trying to guess who was going to have to wrestle Parker.
One of my brother's friends was the unlucky winner. He was almost sh***ing his singlet watching Parker during warmups. And that was the moment another assistant coach and I had to make the difficult decision about how to handle our guy psychologically. We told him that Parker looked tough, but he actually sucked. We assured our guy that he could take Parker. The poor sucker believed us and got all pumped up.
He went out for his match looking determined, and then got brutalized in a quick, less-than-30-second mat mopping. The look on his red, bloodied face when he came back to the bench was priceless, as he gasped "I thought you said he sucked?!?" The other coach and I couldn't help but bust out laughing. His teammates gave him crap about that match into and even beyond high school (he had switched to basketball by then, forever traumatized).
We were sure Parker would be a 4-timer in high school. But, he disappeared the next year, and we always wondered whatever happened to "that black kid from Bath who destroyed Kneedler." I found out when I got to PSU in 2000 -- I was grinning ear-to-ear upon learning he was wrestling D1 for a major program. I made sure to relay that news to Kneedler.
