Black History Month Spotlight: Cornel Parker

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — At Maury High School in Norfolk, even students who are unfamiliar with Cornel Parker’s background can probably figure out that, given his lean 6-foot-7 frame, his sport of choice growing up was basketball.

As head women’s coach at Bryant & Stratton, a junior college in Virginia Beach, Parker remains immersed in the game. But his success with the Lady Bobcats is secondary to Parker’s contributions at Maury and in the community, says Jeff Jones.

Jones coached Parker, a defensive wizard, for four years at the University of Virginia. All told, their lives have intersected for more than a quarter-century.

“He grew while he was at UVA, but the real growth that I saw—and so many people that really, really care about him saw—started happening after he left Charlottesville,” said Jones, who retired last February after 11 seasons as ODU’s head coach and still lives in Tidewater.

Parker is a guidance counselor at Maury, where his fellow faculty members include his wife, the former Jennifer Steadman, who played college basketball at Charleston Southern.

“The man, the father, husband, the leader that Cornel has become is a huge success story. and I’m so proud of him,” Jones said. “He’s beloved in this community. It has zero to do with basketball. The people over at Maury, the parents and the students that he has counseled and helped, and it’s white, Black, rich, poor, it doesn’t matter. He’s probably as highly thought of in terms of his caring for the students and for the human being that he is as anybody around. Cornel and Jen are such proponents of education.”

Born and raised in Norfolk, Parker starred at Maury before spending a postgraduate year at Fork Union Military Academy, where he played for the legendary Fletcher Arritt, a UVA alumnus who died in 2021.

“That one year being with him, I learned so much as a player, but also as a person,” Parker recalled, “because you really had to sacrifice. He helped me to grow. So he was a big part of my journey, even if it was just for one year.”

Parker’s next stop was UVA. As an assistant coach on Terry Holland’s staff at Virginia, Jones had pursued Parker, as had dozens of other Division I programs. After Jones succeeded Holland as head coach in April 1990, Parker became his first recruit.

“And so there was always that connection, that bond,” Jones said. “I think it’s safe to say there were some ups and downs at times during his career, and maybe we butted heads. That would be a good way to put it. But he’s always been a special person to me.”

At Maury, Parker had been part of a diverse student body, so the transition to life on Grounds wasn’t as jarring for him as it was for some of his Black teammates. Derrick Johnson, for example, didn’t have any white classmates in high school.

“He had a bigger adjustment than I did,” Parker said. “Maury kind of helped set me up for UVA, but it still was a big difference, especially when you went to class. There weren’t as many African-Americans in certain classes. I think in my History of India class, there were three of us. That professor was great, but it was an adjustment.”

He had “one or two issues from a racial standpoint,” Parker said, “but it’s something I think just helped me to grow.”

Early in his college career, Parker considered transferring, but his mother urged him to stay at UVA, and he’s glad he followed her advice. On the court, he helped the Wahoos advance to the NCAA tournament three times, and they won the NIT in 1991-92, his sophomore season.

“It was up and down on the athletic side,” Parker recalled, “because I had some internal stuff going on then, but just to be around the environment and people, it was awesome. I wouldn’t change anything.”

He was close not only with his teammates but with other UVA student-athletes, including Dawn Staley, Tonya Cardoza and Tammi Reiss from women’s basketball and Terry Kirby and Chris Slade from football.

“So all of them were part of our unit too, our family,” Parker said.

He started 78 games as a Cavalier. In 1993-94, his senior season, Parker was a team captain and led Virginia in assists. As a defender, Jones said, Parker was unsurpassed.

“We didn’t rely on rotations with Cornel,” Jones said. “He just shut people out. There were names at certain programs that got more publicity, but they weren’t in the same atmosphere as what Cornel could do in the variety of positions and players that he could defend effectively.

“When you take a guy with great speed, great length and guard skills, who’s just incredibly tough and even nasty if need be, he can make an impact on the game in a lot of ways. He just shut people out.  And if I’m being honest, he was probably a jump shot away from being an NBA player. He had all the other boxes checked.”

In the summer of 1994, tryouts with two NBA teams—Boston and Portland—didn’t result in contracts for Parker, but he signed with Golden State that fall. The Warriors released him before the start of the 1994-95 season, however, and he headed overseas, where he played in Turkey, France and Japan.

“And then I just got tired of living abroad and decided just to come home,” Parker said.

He’d left UVA without graduating, and Jones encouraged him to finish work on his bachelor’s degree in psychology. Parker received his degree in 2000, and that opened employment opportunities for him at Maury. He later earned a master’s in counseling from Cambridge College in Massachusetts.

When he stopped playing, Parker said, he didn’t plan on becoming a coach. But Maury head coach Jack Baker “sucked me in,” Parker recalled, laughing. “He was like, ‘Hey, come help me out for a little bit with the team.’

“So I go work out the team, do some stuff with them, and then one day I get a check in the mail. I’m like, ‘Coach, what’s this check for?’ He said, ‘You’re my JV coach now.’ And then that led to the principal giving me a role in the school building. First it was in-school suspension, and then it turned into school improvement, just trying to get kids back into the school, with the dropout rate.’ ”

Baker now holds the title of special assistant on Parker’s staff at Bryant & Stratton. “I always love coaching with him,” Parker said. “So it’s just a great blessing for me to have him in my life.”

A typical work day for Parker starts at 5 a.m., when he gets up and walks his dog. He arrives at Maury around 6:45 a.m. and focuses on his counseling responsibilities until the final bell rings. Then he heads over to Bryant & Stratton for practice (or a game). Parker and his wife, a former varsity girls coach at Maury, have two children who play hoops: son CJ at ODU and daughter Myla at Maury.

“His former teammates and I laugh at times,” Jones said. “It’s like, the dude must not ever sleep, because he’s always got stuff going on.”

Much has changed at Maury since he was in school, Parker said, in part because of the technology available to students now. “And then COVID changed school a lot for the kids. But I still love the job. I still love trying to help young females and males improve and have a life journey after high school, whether it’s college or getting a trade or going into the military.”

Among those he’s advised at Maury is Chase Coleman, now an assistant coach at UVA. Coleman’s father, Cliff, attended Maury with Parker and is now head the men’s basketball coach at Bryant & Stratton.

“So the ties run deep,” Chase Coleman said.

As a boy, Coleman said, he attended Parker’s basketball camps at Maury, and he later played JV ball for Parker. “Whenever I go back to the high school, Coach and his wife are the first two people I go see,” said Coleman, a former UVA guard.

Parker has experienced basketball from multiple angles: as a player, as a coach and even as a referee.

Unhappy with the caliber of officiating he saw at Maury games, Parker said, “I was like, ‘I can do better than them.’ ” Larry Rose, a veteran official in the ACC and other leagues, served as his mentor, said Parker, who was certified as an official.

He mostly refereed high school games but also worked some at the college level. There are only so many hours in a day, though, and Parker eventually gave up officiating to focus on raising his children and his duties at Maury. Still, he said, “I learned a lot from it, and it made me a better coach.”

He never intended to become a college coach, but a friend told him Bryant & Stratton was looking for someone to launch its women’s program. Parker took the job and has built a powerful program.

Coming out of the weekend, his record in 11 seasons at Bryant & Stratton was 211-86. In 2023-24, the Lady Bobcats advanced to the National Junior College Athletic Association’s Division II tournament for the first time, and they’re on track to make a second straight appearance at nationals this season.

Parker said he coaches his women’s team much the same way he did his JV and varsity boys at Maury.

“They’re a little bit more emotional, I’ve learned that part, and that’s why I always try to have a female staff member on my team, so she can kind of balance us out,” he said. “But I tell them they’re basketball players, and that’s what I learned from Dawn Staley, watching her and Tonya Cardozo play. They’re basketball players. Dawn used to play pickup ball with us. So I tell them, ‘You’re a basketball player. You may not be able to dunk or do these certain things, but you can play.’ ”

Parker said he remains close with his former college teammates, including Jason Williford, who’s now the Cavaliers’ associate head coach. Parker said he and his family usually stay with the Willifords in Charlottesville for several days each summer.

He’s no longer the young man who arrived on Grounds in the summer of 1990, uncertain of what awaited him in college. Parker has grown in countless ways, and he continues to be a positive role model for his players at Bryant & Stratton and his students at Maury.

“I’m so damn proud of him,” Jones said. “He had a heck of a collegiate career, but I don’t even think about that anymore. It’s who he is as a man that’s really, really cool.”

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