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Aspen High forward Cory Parker capped a sublime senior season by leading the Skiers to the state semifinals in Fort Collins. (Jordan Curet/The Aspen Times)
ASPEN — It was six, maybe seven years ago. The coach admittedly has a bad habit of forgetting things — scores, dates, reporters’ names — but he remembers this day like it happened last week.
He was down at the middle school, doing what coaches do: Hanging out in the gym. Watching a game. Checking out the kids. Trying to get a feel for what was coming his way in a few years.
That’s when Steve Ketchum got his first glimpse of Cory Parker.
The initial scouting report wasn’t anything special. The coach liked the kid’s height, but he was overweight and slow. No, worse than that.
“Really, really slow,” Ketchum remembers. “Seriously.”
There was, however, an intriguing upside. One of those things that gets a coach thinking big thoughts.
“He was the biggest kid on the court, and I was amazed because he was the best ball handler,” Ketchum adds. “I was just like, ‘That kid’s got major skills for his size.’ He looked like the kid who would play the center position, but here he was bringing the ball up the court and playing the point guard spot on all the teams. I was like, ‘That kid’s got the potential to be something special.’
“All he’s got to do is just become a good athlete.”
<b>The first, the best</b>
Fast-forward to last Monday. The proud coach and his star player were standing in front of a packed school assembly celebrating Aspen’s best boys basketball season in school history. For a season of firsts, there was a lot to get through: First final four appearance, first 23-win season, first team to complete a sweep of the league, district and regional titles, and the first ever to win 20 straight games.
After announcing Aspen’s first-team and honorable mention all-league selections, Ketchum had the rest of his team to take a seat, but told the 6-foot-6 Parker to remain standing.
Having been around basketball long enough, including the last 10 seasons at Aspen, the coach knew that such a moment might never come along again, and made a point of embracing it.
He told the crowd how Parker, for the second straight season, was the unanimous MVP of the 3A Western Slope and a first-team All-State pick. Then he announced there was some news that Parker himself didn’t know, pausing for effect before he spoke again.
The star grew uneasy, anxious, unaware of what was so obvious to so many who had seen him nearly single-handedly drag Aspen — a tiny mountain town known for great skiers and hockey players — to basketball relevance.
Then Ketchum let it be known: Of all the 3A basketball players in Colorado, from the private school studs in Denver, to the tough-as-nails small-town boys from rural dots on the map on the eastern plains and the Western Slope, none was better than Aspen’s very own Parker.
At least, according to one of the state’s ruling authorities on the subject, The Denver Post, which selected Parker as its 3A Mr. Colorado Basketball for 2008.
When Parker heard the news from his coach’s mouth, he says the feeling went out of his legs. His heart starting beating like it was the last minute of the fourth quarter, the clock ticking down, and he again had to come up with the winning shot.
Words wouldn’t come, only the thought that it — the one thing Parker had dreamed of for so long — had finally arrived.
“My dream finally came true,” he says, recounting the moment. “The goal, the dream I’ve been chasing for years, it finally came. It was astonishing. It was unbelievable.”
<b>The mark of a great player</b>
All of this is to say that Cory Parker has turned into something special. The kind of special, in fact, that Ketchum admits even he didn’t foresee upon that first impression years ago.
The kind unseen in a ski town like Aspen: The first player, as far as Ketchum and anyone at Aspen High can recollect, to make the leap to the Division I level straight from high school. The first, with a host of D-I coaches and scouts looking on last month at the Pepsi Center, to take the ball on his first touch in a game featuring the state’s best players and drain a long NBA 3-pointer.
Jon Yunt, a high school sportswriter for The Denver Post, says the selection process for the honor of Mr. Basketball isn’t very involved. There’s the necessary talking to coaches and watching every game at the state tournament. But in the case of Parker, Yunt says what was obvious at the beginning of the season was even more clear at the end after Parker led the Skiers to the 3A semifinals in Fort Collins.
“Cory was the best player in 3A — bar none,” Yunt says. “It’s the first time in a while a kid from a small town like Aspen has won the award, and for us, the chance to see those kinds of kids obviously night in and night out isn’t there. But at state, that’s when you realize this is what this kid has done all year.”
What Parker did in 2008 was lead the Skiers to new heights by sacrificing personal glory. His numbers dropped from a sublime junior season, but the wins only piled up after the multi-talented forward — who still can play any position on the floor — realized he couldn’t do everything on his own.
Case in point: Parker went off for 28 points in Aspen’s playoff loss to Sheridan in 2007, while the rest of his teammates combined for 12.
“The main stress this year, something we wanted to live by, was that one player cannot beat good teams,” Parker says. “It couldn’t be that I just scored and no one else stepped up. This year, a lot of kids worked on their game a lot. Michael Taylor stepped up huge. Tommy Rittenhouse, Brian Westerlind, Matt Holmes, they all stepped up. I realized that I didn’t have to do as much. I realized it’s going to put a damper on my stats and stuff, but it’s going to get us further. I was willing to step aside and let Michael have a breakout year, let him have some of the attention.”
Parker didn’t lead 3A in scoring. (His 20.12 points per game was fifth-best.) He didn’t lead in total points (third-best) or rebounds. Same with assists, steals or blocks.
He did lead, however, as far as Yunt was concerned, when it came to his value for his team.
That was abundantly clear in the state quarterfinals when Parker squared off against 6-foot-10 Yuma forward Justin Coughlin, the runner-up for Mr. Basketball in 3A who will play at the University of Denver next year.
“If you took Coughlin off his team, Yuma was still pretty good,” Yunt said. “He just took them up a notch. If you took Cory off Aspen, that team doesn’t win five games in the Western Slope. He was just that good for that team. … Any coach will tell you that’s the mark of a great player. From 5A to 1A, those are the kids who won the awards, the kids whose teams wouldn’t have been anything without them.”
<b>Keep dreaming</b>
As for what he’s going to do next year, without Parker in the starting lineup, Ketchum isn’t ready to start thinking about it. By the end of his freshman season, when Parker came off the bench, Ketchum says the kid who first caught his eye in middle school had already become his best player.
In the three seasons that followed, Parker became the best player to ever wear an Aspen High uniform, garnering attention from a range of college programs along the way.
Ketchum says his most proud moment as a coach, in all his years coaching pro ball in Europe and big-time high school ball in Missouri, was standing on the floor last month when Parker sank that 3-pointer at the Pepsi Center.
The modest, mature National Merit Society member, who carries a 3.6 grade point average, and seems to be followed by a crowd everywhere he goes at Aspen High, will be more than missed next winter when basketball season rolls around. It’s hard to imagine a Skiers game without Parker playing, and dominating, Ketchum says.
But, as someone who’s watched Parker mature from chubby teenager into a confident, uniquely talented young man, the coach admits he can’t wait for the next phase of Parker’s development as a basketball player.
After weighing his options, Parker eventually settled on Division I Drake in early March after a visit to the Des Moines, Iowa, campus over the holiday break. He’ll be a preferred walk-on there in the fall under coach Keno Davis, with the opportunity to earn a scholarship for a program he calls a “dream fit.”
Parker doesn’t harbor any wild dreams of starting as a freshman for Davis. The national college coach of the year led the Bulldogs to a berth in the NCAA men’s tournament after being ranked as high as 15th in The Associated Press Top 25 during the regular season.
Parker says he knows he could have played right away at smaller division schools which also recruited him, but that wasn’t his goal. He’s also accustomed to proving doubters wrong, and doing so at the next level is what’s fueling him now as he prepares for the toughest challenge of his life.
It’s a challenge that he feels he’s been striving toward as far back as he can remember.
“It’s going to be tough when I come home on some break and people are going to be like, ‘I didn’t even see you play in a game yet,’” Parker says. “Just people not knowing that it’s a whole different level and I’m not going to play immediately. It’s going to take some getting used to at first. Here in Aspen, I’m a superstar, but when I’m playing with all these other kids, it’s because they were superstars where they were from and they were recruited to play Division I basketball for the same reason I was: They were noticed because they’re good. I understand that. I started to understand that when I started playing with my Denver team in the summer. It’s going to take longer for other people in the community to understand that, but they will.”
Parker pauses, focuses, then begins talking again.
“It’s a pressure that I want to have,” he adds. “Playing Division I, I’ve accepted that, and people are still going to be watching me, still be scrutinizing me. But it’s a pressure that I want in a way, because that’s how badly I want to play Division I basketball. It’s going to be tough, but, then again, it’s always been my dream.”
npeterson@aspentimes.com
He was down at the middle school, doing what coaches do: Hanging out in the gym. Watching a game. Checking out the kids. Trying to get a feel for what was coming his way in a few years.
That’s when Steve Ketchum got his first glimpse of Cory Parker.
The initial scouting report wasn’t anything special. The coach liked the kid’s height, but he was overweight and slow. No, worse than that.
“Really, really slow,” Ketchum remembers. “Seriously.”
There was, however, an intriguing upside. One of those things that gets a coach thinking big thoughts.
“He was the biggest kid on the court, and I was amazed because he was the best ball handler,” Ketchum adds. “I was just like, ‘That kid’s got major skills for his size.’ He looked like the kid who would play the center position, but here he was bringing the ball up the court and playing the point guard spot on all the teams. I was like, ‘That kid’s got the potential to be something special.’
“All he’s got to do is just become a good athlete.”
<b>The first, the best</b>
Fast-forward to last Monday. The proud coach and his star player were standing in front of a packed school assembly celebrating Aspen’s best boys basketball season in school history. For a season of firsts, there was a lot to get through: First final four appearance, first 23-win season, first team to complete a sweep of the league, district and regional titles, and the first ever to win 20 straight games.
After announcing Aspen’s first-team and honorable mention all-league selections, Ketchum had the rest of his team to take a seat, but told the 6-foot-6 Parker to remain standing.
Having been around basketball long enough, including the last 10 seasons at Aspen, the coach knew that such a moment might never come along again, and made a point of embracing it.
He told the crowd how Parker, for the second straight season, was the unanimous MVP of the 3A Western Slope and a first-team All-State pick. Then he announced there was some news that Parker himself didn’t know, pausing for effect before he spoke again.
The star grew uneasy, anxious, unaware of what was so obvious to so many who had seen him nearly single-handedly drag Aspen — a tiny mountain town known for great skiers and hockey players — to basketball relevance.
Then Ketchum let it be known: Of all the 3A basketball players in Colorado, from the private school studs in Denver, to the tough-as-nails small-town boys from rural dots on the map on the eastern plains and the Western Slope, none was better than Aspen’s very own Parker.
At least, according to one of the state’s ruling authorities on the subject, The Denver Post, which selected Parker as its 3A Mr. Colorado Basketball for 2008.
When Parker heard the news from his coach’s mouth, he says the feeling went out of his legs. His heart starting beating like it was the last minute of the fourth quarter, the clock ticking down, and he again had to come up with the winning shot.
Words wouldn’t come, only the thought that it — the one thing Parker had dreamed of for so long — had finally arrived.
“My dream finally came true,” he says, recounting the moment. “The goal, the dream I’ve been chasing for years, it finally came. It was astonishing. It was unbelievable.”
<b>The mark of a great player</b>
All of this is to say that Cory Parker has turned into something special. The kind of special, in fact, that Ketchum admits even he didn’t foresee upon that first impression years ago.
The kind unseen in a ski town like Aspen: The first player, as far as Ketchum and anyone at Aspen High can recollect, to make the leap to the Division I level straight from high school. The first, with a host of D-I coaches and scouts looking on last month at the Pepsi Center, to take the ball on his first touch in a game featuring the state’s best players and drain a long NBA 3-pointer.
Jon Yunt, a high school sportswriter for The Denver Post, says the selection process for the honor of Mr. Basketball isn’t very involved. There’s the necessary talking to coaches and watching every game at the state tournament. But in the case of Parker, Yunt says what was obvious at the beginning of the season was even more clear at the end after Parker led the Skiers to the 3A semifinals in Fort Collins.
“Cory was the best player in 3A — bar none,” Yunt says. “It’s the first time in a while a kid from a small town like Aspen has won the award, and for us, the chance to see those kinds of kids obviously night in and night out isn’t there. But at state, that’s when you realize this is what this kid has done all year.”
What Parker did in 2008 was lead the Skiers to new heights by sacrificing personal glory. His numbers dropped from a sublime junior season, but the wins only piled up after the multi-talented forward — who still can play any position on the floor — realized he couldn’t do everything on his own.
Case in point: Parker went off for 28 points in Aspen’s playoff loss to Sheridan in 2007, while the rest of his teammates combined for 12.
“The main stress this year, something we wanted to live by, was that one player cannot beat good teams,” Parker says. “It couldn’t be that I just scored and no one else stepped up. This year, a lot of kids worked on their game a lot. Michael Taylor stepped up huge. Tommy Rittenhouse, Brian Westerlind, Matt Holmes, they all stepped up. I realized that I didn’t have to do as much. I realized it’s going to put a damper on my stats and stuff, but it’s going to get us further. I was willing to step aside and let Michael have a breakout year, let him have some of the attention.”
Parker didn’t lead 3A in scoring. (His 20.12 points per game was fifth-best.) He didn’t lead in total points (third-best) or rebounds. Same with assists, steals or blocks.
He did lead, however, as far as Yunt was concerned, when it came to his value for his team.
That was abundantly clear in the state quarterfinals when Parker squared off against 6-foot-10 Yuma forward Justin Coughlin, the runner-up for Mr. Basketball in 3A who will play at the University of Denver next year.
“If you took Coughlin off his team, Yuma was still pretty good,” Yunt said. “He just took them up a notch. If you took Cory off Aspen, that team doesn’t win five games in the Western Slope. He was just that good for that team. … Any coach will tell you that’s the mark of a great player. From 5A to 1A, those are the kids who won the awards, the kids whose teams wouldn’t have been anything without them.”
<b>Keep dreaming</b>
As for what he’s going to do next year, without Parker in the starting lineup, Ketchum isn’t ready to start thinking about it. By the end of his freshman season, when Parker came off the bench, Ketchum says the kid who first caught his eye in middle school had already become his best player.
In the three seasons that followed, Parker became the best player to ever wear an Aspen High uniform, garnering attention from a range of college programs along the way.
Ketchum says his most proud moment as a coach, in all his years coaching pro ball in Europe and big-time high school ball in Missouri, was standing on the floor last month when Parker sank that 3-pointer at the Pepsi Center.
The modest, mature National Merit Society member, who carries a 3.6 grade point average, and seems to be followed by a crowd everywhere he goes at Aspen High, will be more than missed next winter when basketball season rolls around. It’s hard to imagine a Skiers game without Parker playing, and dominating, Ketchum says.
But, as someone who’s watched Parker mature from chubby teenager into a confident, uniquely talented young man, the coach admits he can’t wait for the next phase of Parker’s development as a basketball player.
After weighing his options, Parker eventually settled on Division I Drake in early March after a visit to the Des Moines, Iowa, campus over the holiday break. He’ll be a preferred walk-on there in the fall under coach Keno Davis, with the opportunity to earn a scholarship for a program he calls a “dream fit.”
Parker doesn’t harbor any wild dreams of starting as a freshman for Davis. The national college coach of the year led the Bulldogs to a berth in the NCAA men’s tournament after being ranked as high as 15th in The Associated Press Top 25 during the regular season.
Parker says he knows he could have played right away at smaller division schools which also recruited him, but that wasn’t his goal. He’s also accustomed to proving doubters wrong, and doing so at the next level is what’s fueling him now as he prepares for the toughest challenge of his life.
It’s a challenge that he feels he’s been striving toward as far back as he can remember.
“It’s going to be tough when I come home on some break and people are going to be like, ‘I didn’t even see you play in a game yet,’” Parker says. “Just people not knowing that it’s a whole different level and I’m not going to play immediately. It’s going to take some getting used to at first. Here in Aspen, I’m a superstar, but when I’m playing with all these other kids, it’s because they were superstars where they were from and they were recruited to play Division I basketball for the same reason I was: They were noticed because they’re good. I understand that. I started to understand that when I started playing with my Denver team in the summer. It’s going to take longer for other people in the community to understand that, but they will.”
Parker pauses, focuses, then begins talking again.
“It’s a pressure that I want to have,” he adds. “Playing Division I, I’ve accepted that, and people are still going to be watching me, still be scrutinizing me. But it’s a pressure that I want in a way, because that’s how badly I want to play Division I basketball. It’s going to be tough, but, then again, it’s always been my dream.”
npeterson@aspentimes.com
