Jeff ParkerFor Parker, it was the perfect fit. After a year in which he had to pick up the pieces of his wrestling career, he found a home at Buffalo, along with a couple of his best friends to this day, Mike Ragusa and Mike Shannon.
Parker, at 25, has already had plenty of unpleasant conversations in his life. There are two, though, that really stick out. The first came on his first day of college in 2003. The second came this summer.
During the first, he was told that Binghamton University was dropping its wrestling program. During the second, he was told the marble-like core inside his neck was a sign of melanoma -- skin cancer.
Like with many challenges in life, Parker looked back at that first conversation in the months that followed the second one and it provided him hope, courage and once again, the conviction to keep fighting, one day at a time.
Jeff Parker (Photo/UB Sports Information)He didn't. He stayed on a Binghamton team that was rapidly dismembering while his teammates either quit or looked for somewhere else to wrestle. It was a tough year, one in which he lost just about twice as many times as he won, one that made him question how much he really wanted to wrestle.
It would have been easy to walk away. Instead, he listened to the advice of his best friend in high school, Mike Ragusa, who told him that he'd love it at the University at Buffalo. Parker would have a chance to earn the starting job at heavyweight, but he'd also be pushed by some pretty good wrestlers in Harold Sherrell and 197-pound All-American Kyle Cerminara. Those wrestlers were older, though, and Parker could fit nicely into Buffalo's plans for the years ahead.
From his first day on campus, it was as if he had a newfound delight in the sport of wrestling. When he was around the wrestling room and not sparring, the smile was ever-present. With a second chance, Parker made the most of it, doubling his win total from his freshman year to his sophomore year.
Even when a plan was hatched that forced him to redshirt during his junior year, Parker took it in stride. In fact, he never even considered it a negative. It gave him a chance to make sure he could graduate at UB while being on a scholarship for four years. It gave him a chance to get better. And, Parker knew, it gave an opportunity to Sherrell to find a permanent spot in the lineup for his fifth year at the school.
When a hip pointer forced him out of practice late during that redshirt year, once again, Parker knew he had a choice to make. He couldn't walk without pain, but he never gave it a second thought. He worked to get healthy. He worked to get back on the mat.
Jeff Parker (Photo/UB Sports Information)Parker even secured the winning season by posting a major decision in his final dual meet, an 11-3 win over a Binghamton wrestler, the same school that had dropped its program four years earlier before bringing it back a year after Parker and Shannon left for Buffalo, to give the Bulls a 20-16 win. In a way, it was the perfect end to Parker's wrestling career that five years earlier had been cast in such doubt.
Soon after graduation, Parker got a job as a construction manager for the Kraft Group in his hometown of Foxboro, Mass., and he also started to coach junior varsity wrestling at Franklin High School.
"Everything was going fine," Parker said. "I was acting like a normal 24-year old -- going to the gym, coaching wrestling and then I felt this thing like a marble inside my neck. I went to see the doctor and went through all the tests. Around the fourth of July, I found out it was melanoma."
He had surgery to remove the cancer and went through chemotherapy and things looked clear until doctors found that the cancer has spread to other parts of his body, including his liver before his last round of chemo.
It would've been easy for Parker to give up, but like with so many things in life, he didn't. The only time he has missed work were to keep doctorâs appointments. He wouldn't just sit on the couch, something he said he got from the children he saw seeing the doctors with him.
"Anytime you have cancer, you're going to see other people with it," Parker said. "To see the kids, who you know are sick, just get out of their car, grab their crutches and get going into the doctors with smiles on their faces because they don't know any better, it gives you a bit more perspective."
Parker knows his fight isn't over. He has been selected into a special trial and every three weeks he is given an injection.
Jeff Parker (Photo/UB Sports Information)That's good because Parker has other things to worry about. When talking to him on the phone two weeks ago, he was just hoping the wrestling team that he coaches at Franklin High School, where he is the junior varsity coach, would beat King Phillip Regional, where Ragusa is the head coach, so he could have bragging rights over his lifelong friend.
The defending state champion Franklin did beat King Phillip, 48-17.
Here's hoping it isn't even close to the last win Parker gets, on the mats or in life.
For his part, Parker said he is positive he won't feel sorry for himself, won't have regrets in his fight against cancer. And of course, like so many other times in his life, he won't give up.
"I'm not a person who feels sorry for myself," he said. "There are a lot of people who have it a lot worse and they don't feel sorry for themselves."
Tough guys rarely do.
The University at Buffalo athletic department and wrestling program is holding the benefit, Takedown Cancer on Jan. 30 in support of former UB wrestler, Jeff Parker. Parker, a 2008 UB graduate who is currently battling melanoma through an experimental trial, said that he is honored that the benefit is going to increase cancer awareness throughout the Western New York and Massachusetts wrestling communities. Proceeds from the event will benefit Carly's Club in Buffalo, part of the Roswell Park Cancer Center, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, Jeff's hometown as well as Parker's family for fees not covered by insurance.
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