Senior Jack McNabola finished his last year at Parker a state champion, with a first-place win in the 3200 meter (roughly 2 miles) and a fourth-place finish in the 1600 meter (1 mile) in the Track and Field IHSA 1A State Finals.  

The road to state was a tough one. Losing the Cross Country State Championship in the fall was to McNabola “a hard thing to deal with,” so he knew there were aspects of his approach that needed to be fixed—mostly with his race strategy and his training methods. But with his winter basketball season in full stride, he now had the additional burden of juggling two very different sports.

“Some days would consist of running half marathons in the morning, and then later in the day, playing an entire basketball game,” McNabola said. “The basketball coach hated it, but it’s what I needed to do if I wanted to be the fastest in the state.”

McNabola will be joining the Fightin’ Irish at Notre Dame in the fall to continue his academic and athletic careers. For him the college recruitment process was “really fun.” McNabola was offered scholarships from about 10 different NCAA Division I schools, along with walk-on opportunities to a number of others. Before making his final decision, he narrowed down his choices to Dartmouth, Notre Dame, and Illinois.

Track and field coaches Jeremy Aniciete, Brett Laoruangroch, and Caleb Flack began the season with Indoor Track and Field. Both McNabola and junior captain Audrey Shadle qualified for the indoor state meet, and McNabola finished third.

In addition to a successful State run, McNabola broke a new school record of 9:14 in the 3200 meters, despite falling mid race. Flack says a personal highlight of his “was going out for Mexican food as a team after the sectional meet,” a moment in the season he felt had “a lot of fun conversation and positive reflections on the season.”

In the boys’ ISL Sectionals, senior and captain Axel Burlin got third in the two mile, and McNabola got first in both the mile and the two mile.

The boys’ baseball team was 6-13 this season, which ended with a close, heartbreaking Regionals loss. The team was tied 0-0 against Holy Trinity for several innings, and then finally earned three runs. They held on for an inning, and then Holy Trinity rose with a five-run rally. Parker put up two home runs, and the two teams went into the 7th inning at 7-5, Parker. But Holy Trinity came back, scoring a run off a Parker error, making it 7-6. Most heartbreaking of all–Parker lost on a walkoff hit in the bottom of the 7th inning.

“I was really excited for it, and so was the whole team,” captain and senior Alex Chapman said. “We were complete underdogs.  The game was very entertaining. It was a mix of emotions–we were winning, then we were losing, then tied, then winning again. They won on a walkoff in the last inning, and it sucked. It was so sad. People were crying. Everyone gave everything they had, and we just came up short.”

The girls’ soccer team finished 9-10-1, with a rousing 7-0 Regionals victory against Noble Street Charter School.  The team then lost in Sectionals against IC Catholic Prep, 0-3.

“This season certainly had its ups and downs,” captain Abby Smith said. “We came in looking for redemption from last year against a very beatable team, and we weren’t fully there the first half, and we paid the price. We were all incredibly proud of our second half, however. We possessed the entire half, and although we didn’t score and didn’t redeem ourselves, we proved to ourselves that we were the better team on the pitch.”

This season the boys’ tennis team looked to improve upon their 2017 8-6 record. With half of last year’s roster graduating, varsity coach Jon Hall-Bryant called it “a tough task.” He said, “the young team responded well and finished with a 10-5 record.”

According to Bryant, this was the first season with double digit wins in three years. The team finished 3rd in conference, with a 4-2 conference record. Bryant went on to add, “With the early success of this young team, the future looks bright.”

Girls’ softball were 5-9, and ended their season with a Regionals loss against Latin at Westmont.  According to captain Elisabye Slaymaker, “The whole team was really excited and pumped up on the way to the game.”

The game started out rough, and it looked like without a score, the game would end in the 5th inning. But with two outs, and no runs yet scored by Parker, all of a sudden the team came back and brought the score to 9-13. Slaymaker felt the team “had a great comeback, and it was a really good way to end the season.”

The schedule wasn’t easy on the team.  “Overall the season was somewhat chaotic because in the beginning of the season we had no games, and at the end we had at least four games a week,” Slaymaker said. “For periods of time we were either practicing for weeks or playing super jam-packed games, which really does not help how a team functions.”

But Slaymaker has plans for the future. “Our plans for next year is more batting in practice because we didn’t get much this year,” she said. “We also had a rough schedule this year due to weather and cancellations. So the last week of the season, we ended up having a game every day and barely any practice, so next year we really want to be able to practice before our games.”