Sports Editor's Note: The following was submitted by Norwich High School Athletic Director Joseph Downey, and was written by Tom Rowe.
Although he never wore a shield with a large red “S” on his chest, Jeff Parker embodied two of the three traits associated with ‘Superman.’ No, he didn’t leap over tall buildings with a single bound, but like the fictional ‘Man of Steel’ he seemed to be “faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive” whenever he donned the Purple and White, especially when he took to the Norwich football field.
A three-sport athlete (football, basketball and baseball) with eight varsity letters under his belt, Parker earned his spot in the sixth induction class of the Norwich High School Sports Hall of Fame with his record-setting performance on the gridiron. There, between 1994-96, he established the Tornado’s all-time career rushing mark of 2,930 yards on 356 carries in 25 games, an average of 8.2 yards per tote and 117.2 yards per outing. The previous record of 2,652 yards had been held by Barry Benjamin, a fellow NHSSHOF inductee, back in 1980-82. And, that total would have been even greater had he not missed the final two games of the 1995 season due to an ankle injury.
“Jeff was a threat to go all the way every time he touched the ball. He, in one word, was explosive,” recalled former Norwich football coach John Pluta. “He was a complete back – a tremendous combination of desire, explosiveness, speed, strength and instinct.”
That explosiveness was compacted into a 5-foot; 9-inch frame that topped out at 180 pounds. But, like Superman, this mighty mite packed a punch with lightning speed and strength. In addition to that career rushing record, Parker scored 31 touchdowns and added 24 PATs for a tidy sum of 210 points or 8.4 per game. During the course of his three-year stint as the Purple’s go-to guy, he compiled 100 yards or more 14 times, with three games being in excess of 200 yards.
“Jeff was not among our fastest players in practice, but he did not get caught on game days when he broke into the clear,” noted Pluta, who nowadays is the defensive line coach at Morrisville State College. “In our quick dive game, he was the best we had. He understood the need to explode through the hole and nobody got into it quicker. He would disappear into the line and had an uncanny ability to make one cut, break a tackle at the second level and burst into the secondary.”
The first of those 200-yard efforts came during his junior year of 1995 when he went 16-for-217 in a 46-14 thumping of Seton Catholic Central on Oct. 7. He, however, saved his best for his senior campaign when he totaled 235 yards on 26 totes as Norwich blanked Solvay 14-0 in the Carrier Dome on Sept. 14, 1996, and proceeded to chart his best single-game performance of 32-for-267 in the Purple’s hard-fought 28-23 triumph at Oneonta on Oct. 11.
And, those 31 six-pointers weren’t short pops, either, as more than half – 17 to be exact – came from 20 yards or more. In fact, six of those long TD bursts were from distances of 50 yards or greater. Three of those gargantuan gallops occurred during his sophomore season when he broke off real estate runs of 80, 68 and 57 yards in respective victories over Waverly (46-6), Owego (35-6) and Seton Catholic Central (42-19). He began his junior year with a 64-yarder in a season-opening loss to Vestal, and put the cap on those distant dashes with TDs of 50 and 76 yards in those aforementioned respective triumphs over Solvay and Oneonta during his senior crusade.
Besides establishing the all-time career rushing record of 2,930 yards, Parker came narrowly close to chalking up the best single-season mark when he totaled 1,356 yards on 196 carries (6.9 per carry and 150.7 per game) during his final year of 1996. Despite gaining only 28 yards on 16 totes in the Tornado’s season-opening 39-14 victory at Vestal, that sum was a mere 32 yards shy of tying Jason Morris, another NHSSHOF enshrinee, who posted 1,388 yards back in 1991.
That low yardage total versus the Golden Bears is deceptive, however, as the Vestal defense – remembering well Parker’s 110-yard performance of a year earlier - keyed on him with several players throughout the game. While the speedy Norwich back played decoy, the attention he commanded allowed his Tornado teammates to find ample running room. The end result was that the rest of the Purple backs went 28-for-179 (6.4 yards per carry), with Jason Thomas (73 yards), James Manwarren (55 yards) and John Loiselle (31 yards) setting the standard in the 25-point triumph.
Postseason accolades abounded for Parker as he earned All-Division and All-County honors in each of his three varsity seasons, while being named to the prestigious All-Metro team and The Evening Sun’s Player of the Year following his senior campaign. But, in some way his first sojourn onto the gridiron as a Norwich varsity player may have been a foreshadowing of what the future had to hold. In that game, a 16-14 Tornado victory over Elmira Free Academy in the Section IV Class B championship, Parker wound up being a key cog in the triumph.
Just before halftime, quarterback Chris Maynard hit Charlie Wightman on a 24-yard scoring strike. Electing to kick the extra point due to the sloppy field conditions, the ensuing snap from center was awry but Parker, a freshman just up from the junior varsity to spell the injured Josh Morris, had the presence of mind to flip the ball to Wightman who was able to elude the EFA defense and score what proved to be the two-point winning differential.
