By Tim Clark
he phone hasn’t stopped ringing in Dennis Parker’s office since the new coach of the Bulldog football team arrived on campus. Parker has two phones – a cell phone and his office phone – on his desk. And if you sit in his office for a minimum of five minutes, he’ll likely have used both phones at least once.
But that’s the life of a new college coach who is moving his family, hiring coaches, recruiting players, meeting returning players and running an off-season football program – all at the same time.
And Parker, 56, is enjoying it all.
“Every new job you take along the way you have a little bit of buyer’s remorse,” said Parker. “When you take a step back and go home, you might say, ‘Maybe I should have stayed with the old job.’ But this is the first job I have taken that I have not had that feeling.”
“This is really a homecoming for Merry and me. Having lived in Seguin before and known about Texas Lutheran for so long, this is really a dream come true. It is truly an honor and very humbling to be at the place that produced the likes of Melvin Boelter, Ebbie Neptune, Frank Arnold, D.W. Rutledge and Mike Washington. And to follow in the coaching steps of Jim Wacker and Tom Mueller and all the great Bulldog coaches, it’s pretty overwhelming.”
Parker coached at Mesa High School in Arizona for the last three seasons, where he guided the Jackrabbits to the state playoffs in 2006. Parker has collegiate coaching experience as the head coach of NCAA Division I University of North Texas. He coached at North Texas for the 1991, 1992 and 1993 seasons. Parker was also an assistant coach at Southeast Missouri State University from 1977 to 1981.
Parker won a state championship at Marshall High School in Marshall, Texas in 1990. He took the job at Marshall after serving as the offensive coordinator for Converse Judson on its 1983 state championship team. While at Converse Judson, Parker was Frank Arnold’s offensive coordinator and another TLU Hall of Famer, Rutledge, was the team’s defensive coordinator at the time.
Parker has had football head coaching stops in Texas at San Antonio Edison High School, Marshall High School and Cleburne High School. He has been a Texas high school assistant football coach at San Antonio Edison, San Antonio Holmes and Converse Judson. He was named the Texas High School Coach of the Year in 1988 and in 1990.
Parker has served as athletic director at Marshall High School, Cleburne High School, Keller Independent School District in Keller, Texas, and Ector County Independent School District in Odessa, Texas.
Parker is an accomplished author and public speaker. He has developed seven curricula on teaching character and has performed more than 100 in-services for training teachers in character education.
“To come back to Texas has been so gratifying,” said Parker. “To have the greatest coaches in America, the Texas high school coaches, call and write with their congratulations has been an honor. I’m just ready to get started, to get out there and reconnect with these coaches, and to tell future Bulldogs that we want their time at TLU to be the best time of their life.”
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