Cape football coach John Parker retires after 41 years on the sidelines
Football coach John Parker walked through the Cape rotunda late Wednesday morning, a rising sun arching southwest across a bluebird sky. The 60-year-old grandfather, known as Pappy to his grandchildren, was powering through his last day of a 28-year teaching career that included 41 years of coaching. The final lines of the 1925 T.S. Eliot poem "The Hollow Men" came to mind: "This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."
"This is my last day," coach Parker said with a smile. "I started coaching Pop Warner in 1976 after dropping out of Bridgewater College. I ran Forest Glen Sporting Goods for 10 years, which was also a gym with racquetball courts. I later coached at Sussex Central when [Dave] Bloodsworth got the job. Coach [Bill] Collick was instrumental in getting me up to Del State to finish my degree."
Parker is like a lot of football coaches whose careers rarely follow a straight line.
"Coach Tom Pegelow retired just before the season at Woodbridge and I got that job, and I was there 1988 and 1989. We went 7-3 in 1989, which was the most games they ever won," Parker said.
John went to Sussex Tech in 1991, and in 1993, as head coach of the Ravens, he won the Division II state championship. That team recently had a 20-year reunion in coach Parker's garage.
In 1998, the decision makers at Sussex Tech made their choice - "I guess they decided I couldn't coach anymore," he said. So John was back to Woodbridge, and in 1999 the Raiders went 10-0 with Parker being named state Coach of the Year.
He later left, spent a year on the sidelines with Indian River before coming to Cape, where he has coached with Bill Collick as defensive coordinator the last seven years.
"I coach for the kids and that daily contact, to watch them grow into better people, and get stronger and more secure in themselves along the way," Parker said. "I've run the weight room wherever I've coached, so it's a year-round job."
A young-looking grandfather of five with two more on the way, coach just kept it simple when asked, "Why leave now?"
"It's just time," he said.
