Ithaca’s Daniel Parker to suit up for IC football

This fall, the Ithaca College football team will be back in action as they look to repeat what rivals SUNY Cortland achieved last season: win a national championship. Joining the Bombers on their road to glory is a hyperlocal standout.

Daniel Parker will stay in town to continue playing football after a successful four-year varsity career at Ithaca High School. While there were many Division III and SUNY schools that were interested in Parker’s services, his close ties to the school and the area were too good to pass up.

“My dad went to Ithaca, my coach went to Ithaca, and a lot of people around me went to Ithaca,” Parker said. “I knew it was a great school to begin with, but then also adding on the fact that they are a national contender, it definitely made it more intriguing to go there.”

The coach Parker referred to is IHS head coach Khiry Brown, who is also a Little Red alum. Parker credited Brown as well as IC’s head team physician Andrew Getzin for helping him join the Bombers.

“I give my props to Andrew Getzin,” Parker said. “He was a big part of the reason I got into IC and everything else. He helped a lot and I really appreciate that. Coach Brown is second to none. He was the first person to talk to [head] coach [Mike] Toerper about me being interested going up there. We went up. We had a meeting with them. There’s really nothing more Coach Brown could have done for me, and I’m very thankful for that.”

Brown’s first year leading IHS made Parker’s final year a memorable one. After going winless the previous season, the Little Red overcame an 0-2 start and won their final seven games, making it their most successful campaign in recent memory. Parker praised the coaching staff—which included fellow Little Red alums Nazier Landes and Daquan Griffin—for bringing out the team’s full potential.

“I knew we had a good team under our belts,” Parker said. “We just couldn’t get it together, and the coaching staff that he put together did the absolute best that they possibly could of to bring the best out of each and every single person on our team. The coaching staff—especially the people he brought into the system—really brought the best out of everyone on the team.”

Parker was already a stellar player even before the new regime. He was named a Section IV First Team All-Star during his junior year and earned the same honor last season. Parker was a jack-of-all-trades for the Little Red. He’s played everywhere from quarterback to running back to wide receiver on offense while excelling in the secondary on defense. It’s the latter side of the ball that Parker feels has improved the most at IHS.

“I’ve always been a wrestler, so I’ve always had contact and everything else,” Parker said. “But I wasn’t really a hitter back in the day. I didn’t go hit people. I kind of was scared to hit. But stepping into ninth grade-10th grade, I started to actually hit more… [I’ve gotten] more aggressive and more defensive minded because I’ve always been an offensive-minded person. Offensive just came easier to me [as] opposed to defense, but this year I took the jump and played every snap on defense. I more so ran the offense, and my friend Nick Talbot definitely ran the defense. To be able to not always rely on him but rely on myself was a big step for myself.”

Another valuable aspect that Parker learned while playing for the Little Red was fighting through the adversity of suffering many losses, particularly throughout the first three years of varsity football.

“[I got] that perspective of losing and having to come back every day and put in the best effort I possibly could and keep everyone else’s energy up,” Parker said. “If I was at a winning program, I wouldn’t have had that same mentality of, ‘Alright, although we’re losing, you still got to pick it up, come back and do what we’re doing, believe in the coaches,’ things like that.”

While Parker was recruited defensively, he will be trying out as a wide receiver. Wherever he ends up playing for the Bombers, he can’t wait to be part of a program aiming to win it all.

“The thing that I want to bring is just the energy and applying myself every day as much as I possibly can to learn the new system that I’m just stepping into and building a relationship with the guys that have been there for two to three years,” Parker said. “That’s definitely what I’m looking forward to.”

The Bombers enter the 2024 season as back-to-back Liberty League champions and ranked 20th in the D3football.com preseason poll. They begin play on September 7 against 8th-ranked Johns Hopkins at Butterfield Stadium.