Dan Parker’s illustrious coaching career is a testament to his unwavering dedication, innovative strategies, and remarkable success in the world of high school cross country and track. Beginning as a volunteer at Snohomish High School in 1987, Dan quickly took the reins as head coach in 1988, inheriting a small team of fewer than 20 boys and five girls. Despite the modest beginnings, Dan had a clear vision for the program’s future, pushing for top-tier competition across the state and country.
In the 1990s, Dan established the Great Pumpkin Race, a popular event that attracted up to 700 young competitors from first to sixth grade. To fund extensive travel for his teams, Dan spearheaded various fundraising activities involving athletes, coaches, and parents, from running concessions at Mariners games to parking cars at concerts, painting houses, and selling corn at the Bigfoot soccer tournament. Not only funding the teams travel but creating lasting memories.
Under Dan’s leadership, Snohomish High School’s cross-country teams flourished from 1988 to 2008, securing 17 WESCO League Championships and 14 Northwest District Championships for the girls, alongside 11 WESCO and 9 District titles for the boys. His girls’ teams clinched four Washington State Championships in 1995, 1996, 2002, and 2003. Additionally, as the head girls’ track coach from 2000 to 2003, Dan led the team to state championships in 2001 and 2002 and a second-place finish in 2003.
In 2009, Dan transitioned to Glacier Peak High School, where he continued his legacy of excellence. Over a decade, his teams amassed 10 WESCO League Championships and 11 Northwest District Championships for the girls, and three each for the boys. The Glacier Peak girls’ teams won five Washington State Championships in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2018.
Dan’s exceptional coaching earned him numerous accolades, including Washington State Cross Country Coach of the Year in 1996, 2010, 2013, and 2018, and US Northwest Region 8 Cross Country Coach of the Year in 2003 and 2014. In 2022, Dan’s outstanding contributions were recognized with his induction into the Washington State Track & Field and Cross Country Hall of Fame.
Read on to hear more about Dan Parkers coaching career and what life looks like now for him!
SCSC: Give us a brief overview of your time coaching?
PARKER: I never meant to be a teacher or a coach. My dad was a teacher, and I knew the long hours and low pay and it didn’t feel very attractive. We all fit in the world someplace, and in the end, I fit better as a teacher and coach than anything else I could have done.
So that being said, the way I got hired to be head cross country coach at Snohomish High School was that I competitive ran 10K’s, 5K’s, and marathons for a period of time and me and my other training partners trained down at Snohomish High School. Thats where we went to school, and we lived in the area. Naturally, I got to know some of the running athletes; some of them would run with us. Then my high school coach, Eason, died of brain cancer. They originally replaced him with the math teacher, however that didn’t work out and he quit after two weeks. Since we were already running up there, I kind of took over and started coaching the kids and writing all the workouts. The next year, I got hired permanently to coach cross country and be the assistant track coach. Which eventually led to being head women’s track coach for a period of time. Ultimately, being the distance coach was best for me, and best for the athletes.
We were quite successful. It was all about putting the program into place and establishing some kind of expectations out of your lead runners and they’d pass that on, and it just got rolling. It took on a life of its own. I was lucky that I had great coaches, great support and all. Then of course Snohomish HS split into two high schools, Snohomish and Glacier Peak. Initially, I was assigned to Glacier Peak, but I kind of fought to stay at Snohomish. Over a period of time, I thought it would be interesting to try to start all over again and see if we can establish the same type of program at Glacier Peak with the same kind of success we had at Snohomish. That was gratifying.
SCSC: When did you step away from coaching?
PARKER: I stepped away from teaching and coaching during the covid year. It worked out perfectly, I was going to retire during that year in June anyway. Then COVID hit in March, and I thought we would be back in 2 weeks, a month even, and it didn’t work out that way. I do keep track of the different teams and. and i have run cross country and track meets at Snohomish High School so I kind of keep my hand in it.
SCSC: What did athletics look like in your life before you were coaching, were you involved in cross country competitively?
PARKER: I was pretty good at football, basketball, you know, track, everything. My 8th and 9th grade years, I didn’t grow at all. All of a sudden, I went from being a kid of moderate height to being one of the shortest kids in the class and I weighed like under 100 lbs. My freshman year I went out for football, and I was on the second team. On the first team, the linebackers consisted of Jerry Ingles, who went on to play for the UW and Jay Anderson, who we called Animal Anderson for a good reason, he went on to play at Montana State. I was a half back so they would hand the ball off to me and those guys would just kill me. I was always a good distance runner, so I decided my sophomore year, screw football, I’m going out for cross country. I ran cross country and track for the rest of my career there.
SCSC: In your opinion, what makes a good coach?
PARKER: It’s a combination of things. I think you have to be a competitor and have had some experience running yourself. That’s not always true, but it helped me quite a bit. I think you have to have a good sense of humor. You have to establish your expectations. You’ve got to measure it with a sense of humor, because teaching and coaching to a certain extent is entertainment. You’ve got to sell your product. When I taught history, I had to sell history to the kids, and I was pretty successful at that. I had the same thing with cross country, which both track and cross country are pretty thankless sports, there’s not a lot of glory. So, in order to attract kids, what we started doing is traveling. Also, because we became so good, we wanted to face the best teams, not only in the state, the best teams in the nation. We raced in Hawaii, North Carolina, Minnesota, California, Montana, Idaho, we were all over the place. That was really attractive to the kids.
SCSC: What was your coaching philosophy and how did it change over the years?
PARKER: My philosophy was run hard, run fast, run long. If you’re going to do something, do it to the best of your ability. That’s what I preached to my kids. That’s one of the reasons that I quit coaching in the end, and teaching, to a certain extent. I wasn’t bringing the same energy to my job as I had been, and if I’m going to ask that much out of the kids, then I better be able to bring it. Once I couldn’t bring that same energy, I thought it was time to step away.
SCSC: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as a coach?
PARKER: Recruiting kids was not my strong point. In fact, I utilized my athletes to attract other athletes. That was a big challenge. Also in the first year, we had success in both girls’ and boys’ teams, but we had our largest amount of success with the girls’ team. The first year I coached, I only had five girls, and it takes five girls to score. I think you must have a franchise athlete, and we had that which attracted other people. We also had the last girl in every race, but you have to have five, so she was very important to the team. From that point on, we drew more and more kids to the program, but that first year was challenging.
SCSC: What would you say is your biggest accomplishment/achievement in your coaching career?
PARKER: Getting athletes to accomplish what they never thought they were able to. We didn’t have a lot of #1 athletes. We only won the state meet as individuals a few times. We ran as a pack and we had some really tight packs as a result, and a lot of those kids probably overachieved. Not super talented kids, but kids with giant gigantic hearts that would listen to what we were trying to do. They would spend the long hours training, and the result was incredible.
SCSC: What is your best piece of advice to any young athlete?
PARKER: I would say don’t specialize. Participate in many sports as you can. I think you cheat yourself out of experiences and relationships with other people when you concentrate and blow all kinds of money on one sport. Just leave yourself open to all kinds of experiences.
SCSC: What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career as a coach?
PARKER: I didn’t know we would become as successful as we did. Early on, I walked the kids into the Snohomish High School gym and they one had two or three state banners up at the time and I pointed to them and said, “We want one of those”. We actually got quite a few.
SCSC: What does your life look like now?
PARKER: It seems like I’m working harder now than I did when I was teaching and coaching. I remodel houses for friends, for family. I do a lot of that type of work. I’ve always traveled quite a bit, in fact, when I was teaching, every two summers, I would take 50 kids and probably 20 adults to Europe for a month. Also, for the last three out of five summers, my wife and I have done pilgrimage walks in Europe.
SCSC: What does receiving this induction mean to you?
PARKER: Actually, I’m really comfortable with it. I went over the list of all the people that have been inducted and 26 of them I have a direct connection to in some way. They’re friends and quality individuals, but I think being around those people, their success rubs off on you. You see how they live their lives, and in some ways, you kind of try to emulate what you think is really important about what they’ve done and try it and adopt it to your own lifestyle.
You can honor Dan and the 7 other inductees at the Hall of Fame Banquet on September 25th at Angel Of The Winds Arena. Visit 2024 Sports Hall of Fame Induction Banquet (auctria.com) to make a donation or purchase tickets.