Academic Athlete/South Georgia/October 2013
Christian Parker
Lowndes High School
Valdosta, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Lowndes tight end hopes for #1 finish on field, in classroom Football player and valedictorian. It’s happened a couple of times in South Georgia but it remains one of the rarest of feats in area football circles. In 2013-2014, it could happen again.
As of early September, Christian Parker, the Vikings’ 6’1”, 200-pound tight end, was ranked number one in the Lowndes High Class of 2014. “I hope it will hold,” says Parker. “There are a couple of people right behind me. I’m going to do my best and let the chips fall where they may.” Ascending to the top of a class of 660 students, many of them high achievers in their own right, is the result of a lifetime of meticulous attention to academic detail. Parker has never taken a day off when it comes to his schoolwork. He is disciplined and is very good at managing his time. Parker attributes his first-in-class ranking more to time management than sheer intelligence. “It comes down to how you manage your time. There is no messing around. I take all my subjects seriously and I do the best I can in every class. There’s not much time available – you have to [do] as much as you can in the allotted time,” he says.Parker plays football in the fall and tennis in the spring.
By the time football season ends, which at Lowndes is usually around Thanksgiving or beyond, the first semester is almost over. Tennis consumes nearly all of the spring semester. There simply aren’t many days during the year when Parker can just go home after school and relax. It’s always a balancing act: juggling school with sports or another activity of some kind. Despite the challenges he faces, he refuses to make excuses or let his grades slip. “There are plenty of times I’ve gotten home around midnight from tennis matches and had to stay up doing homework or projects. It’s just what you have to do sometimes,” he says.That same commitment and work ethic spills over to the football field. Parker wants to be the best football player he can on the best team in the state, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make both happen. “I want to win and I’ll do whatever’s best for the team. I’ll go wherever Coach [Randy] McPherson wants me to go,” he says.As a tight end in Lowndes’s wing-T offense, much of Parker’s time is spent blocking. He would love to be used as a receiver more but he understands that his primary role is to clear a path for the Lowndes running game. Every once in a while, though, he gets an opportunity to make a play. Early in the 2013 season, he had such an opportunity. In the season opener against Luella – which the Vikings won, 42-2 – Parker scored the first touchdown of the 2013 season. He ran a corner route and found himself wide open in the end zone. Quarterback Austin Dixon’s throw was perfect. “I didn’t have any touchdowns last year. I blocked the whole season. It was nice to get into the end zone,” he laughs.
Parker’s willingness to put team above himself, his athletic ability, and his academics are a combination that has football coaches at some of the most prestigious universities in the countries flocking to Lowndes County – the cream of the crop academically, including Harvard, Cornell, and other Ivy League institutions. That any college, much less Ivy League schools, would be interested in Parker is a surprise to him. He always thought football would be something he played in high school. After that, he would hang up his helmet and work on his next challenge. Parker is now rethinking his post high school career.“It blindsided me. When coaches started looking at me last year, it was a big surprise. Playing football in college is very much a possibility.
I’m going to wait until the end of the season to make a decision. We’ll see what happens then,” he says.
Christian Parker has played several different sports and participated in a number of different activities in his Lowndes High School career. He is a member of Beta Club and Mu Alpha Theta, editor of The Huginn (Lowndes’s literary magazine), and vice president of the Ultimate Frisbee Club. He also plays a little tennis, though he admits that tennis is something he does just to have fun and stay active in the spring. Parker also wrestled as a sophomore. “Tennis is just a hobby. It’s too time consuming if you want to be at the top, and I just don’t have the time to do that,” he says.
Favorites:
• Sport you wish you could play: Wrestling
• Last movie: Hotel Transylvania
• TV series: The Office
• Team: Miami Dolphins or Georgia Bulldogs
• Player: Peyton Manning
• Place to travel: Europe
• Person to meet: “The president, whoever he happens to be at the time.”
