After over 30 years of marriage, Cathy Parker is a head coach’s wife
“It’s different with Carl coming on in on this later in life, at 50 years old. He’s played in the Super Bowl. We’ve had a kid taken in the first round of the Major League Baseball Draft. We don’t have anything to prove. We want to pour what we have into this community and this team to make a difference. Winning at all costs – we don’t have that attitude. It’s more than that. They hired Carl to turn the program around, and he’s very focused on that. We have enough maturity to know it takes a lot of hard work. And he’s willing to do that,” says Cathy Parker, the wife of Lanier County head football coach Carl Parker.
Coach Parker has indeed become a head coach later in life. But this is far from his first coaching gig. For Coach Parker – and by default, Cathy – athletics have been a way of life. In one way or another, the Parker family has been involved in sports since day one. Carl and Cathy dated through Carl’s college and six-year professional football career, which included two years with the Cincinnati Bengals and an appearance in Super Bowl XXIII (Parker’s Bengals lost to the San Francisco 49ers).
The Parkers have four children – Kyle, who was a two-sport athlete at Clemson (football and baseball), a first-round draft choice by the Colorado Rockies, and currently a member of the Rockies’ big-league squad; Collin, a volunteer coach at Lanier County who played college football; Kendal, a linebacker at SUNY Maritime College in New York; and Cara, a star softball player at Appalachian State. One way or another, Carl Parker has always coached, no matter what his daytime job may have been.
This time, however, it’s different. The Parkers don’t have to deal with the usual challenges that a coaching family has to face. Their children are grown and out of the house. It’s just the two of them, and Cathy has plenty to keep her busy. She works full-time with the Boys and Girls Club in Valdosta. She’s also writing a book and helping to produce a movie. While she’s doing that, her husband is working on building a winning program in Lakeland.
“We’ve never not been at the ball field,” Cathy says. “It’s just now that our livelihood comes from it. Nothing’s really changed at the Parker household. We still live at the ball field. And Carl’s always been coaching. Only difference now is that we’re getting paid for it.”
For Cathy, the Lanier County job was a tremendous blessing. Carl went to work at Lanier County as athletic development director. While he was there, he was offered a coaching job outside of the Valdosta area. If he took the job – and he was going to – it would have meant moving yet again. And Cathy didn’t want to leave Valdosta.
“I was born and raised here,” she says. “Carl moved here when he was 12 years old. We’re both Lowndes High graduates. When we moved back in 2011, we were glad to be back, and we wanted to stay. But that other job was a great opportunity for him.”
Not long after Carl went to work in Lakeland, and before he could accept the other coaching offer, Lanier County’s head coach abruptly resigned. Lanier’s administration didn’t want to lose Carl, so they offered him the head football coaching position. It was a tremendous blessing, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Cathy was thrilled that the job came along when it did – Carl could do what he loved, and they could stay in Valdosta.
“It was a real answer to prayer,” she says. “We wouldn’t have to move.”
So what is Cathy’s role with the team? She’s a very independent individual with a variety of projects to keep her busy. At the same time, she’s a typical head coach’s wife. She feels the frustration of not winning. She supports her husband. And she gives him the time he needs to change the culture in Lanier County.
“I go to all the games,” she says. “I’m busy, but all the kids know who I am. They know me as ‘Carl’s wife’ and ‘Collin’s mom’. I have a lot of compassion for parents of the athletes. I’ve been there. I know how they feel.”
The work of building the Bulldogs into a consistent winner is going to take a long time. The biggest thing the Lanier County program needs is continuity. Carl Parker is the fifth head coach the Bulldogs have had since 2009. They’ve averaged about three wins a year over that time and haven’t been a playoff contender in a decade. It’s going to take time, hard work, and a long-term commitment to turn the program around. That’s exactly what Cathy Parker expects, and the rebuilding process is something to which she is very committed.
“We want to stay at Lanier County and build a winning program,” she says. “We want to stay in South Georgia, be around family, and have a place for our children to call home. That would be our desire.”
Sidebar #1:
Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of words have been written about Cathy Parker’s involvement with Alaska’s Barrow Whalers football team. The short version is that Cathy spearheaded a long, and at times frustrating, process to provide a field to the Whalers, the first and only football team above the Arctic Circle.
Back in 2007, when the Parkers lived in Jacksonville, Florida, Cathy saw an ESPN “Outside the Lines” special on a football team in Barrow, Alaska – the most northern American settlement. Barrow was starting a football program after the kids at the local high school said football would keep them in school. With no grass to play on, and the nearest opponents being 500 miles away, football in the Arctic was controversial and expensive. Cathy knew the positive impact football had made on her family, and she wanted the kids in Alaska, almost literally a half a world away, to experience those same blessings.
“I said to Carl, ‘You know, that football program is going to save the lives of those young men.’ He agreed,” she says.
Cathy developed a vision and a burden almost immediately for the players in Barrow. A woman of tremendous faith, she saw football as a ministry for those young men. She began a project to raise money, nearly $1 million, to get an artificial turf field to Barrow for the Whalers.
Despite more hurdles than anyone could ever foresee, the project was a success. The Whalers got their field (which is named after Cathy), and they also got a trip to Jacksonville to practice, enjoy the Florida sunshine, and spend a little time with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The Whalers now have a docu-drama on the NFL Network and are a perennial playoff team. In the near future, their story will be told on the big screen; a movie is in the works that should begin filming in 2016. Because movies often don’t tell the whole story, Cathy is writing a book about the experience to fill in the gaps that the film will invariably leave out.
“It has definitely mushroomed, that’s for sure,” she says. “Every time I get my head around it, I see something else I didn’t notice. It’s been very exciting. It wasn’t easy, but it’s one of those stories of faith, teamwork, persistence, prayer, and everything else. It has a storybook ending, and we’re thankful we didn’t miss out on that opportunity.”
Sidebar #2:
Not only have all of the Parker children played sports, they’ve all played at a fairly high level. All three boys played college football; youngest son Kendal is still playing at SUNY Maritime in New York. Cara, the Parkers’ only daughter, is in the process of forging a tremendous softball career for herself at Appalachian State University.
The eldest of the Parker children is Kyle, who played football and baseball at Clemson University. The Colorado Rockies took him in the first round of the 2010 draft. To date, he has played in 64 big-league games and has hit three home runs, has 12 RBI, and is hitting .182 for his career.
Cara Parker is in her sophomore year at Appalachian State. An All-Region and All-State player at Lowndes High, Cara was named to the Southern Conference All-Freshman team last year. According to Appalachian State’s website, she was fifth on the team with a .311 batting average and led the team with nine doubles, two triples, 10 home runs, 29 RBI, 19 walks, and a .659 slugging percentage. Indeed, Cathy and Carl know a thing or two about developing great athletes. Now they’re trying to continue their legacy, this time about 20 miles away in Lakeland, Georgia.
Special Feature/South Georgia/December 2015
Cathy Parker
Lanier County High School
Lakeland, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Photography by Lindsi Jones Photography
