Gabriel Parker '18 Recruiting Profile

        I am a junior and will graduate IMG Academy in the Spring of 2018.  My collegiate goal is to attend a top academic university and earn the privilege to be a member of its baseball team.  I also aspire to start my own business someday. I already have many ideas for starting a business, which is why I intend to major in Economics and Business when I attend college.

        I believe you will find that I am a very passionate and goal oriented athlete. I consider each day an opportunity to improve my skills and contribute to my team. I have learned to make the most of my time on the field during practice in order develop as the best player I can. I'm well aware that once time passes, it is impossible to make up, especially if that time was wasted or lost for whatever reason.

        But there is more to me than baseball. I am also a confident, warmhearted, and self-driven individual who takes nothing, nor anybody, for granted. This is what I have learned from my parents and my own experiences off the field.

        Both my mom and dad grew up in hard working families.  My dad is from Boston.  He grew up in a housing project.  He did not have much growing up. His parents (my grandparents) worked numerous jobs to keep a roof over their heads. My dad started working as a newspaper carrier when he was 12 years old. He will always tell me the story about how he built his paper route from 20 customers to over 100 customers, and how he woke up every day at 5:30 a.m. for four years, no matter how cold it was outside, to deliver newspapers. Today, my dad is a successful trial attorney in New York City.  He is very passionate about his work. Yet, he works as hard as he does not for himself, but for my mother, younger brother and me.

        My father's spirit was tested recently. In the Fall 2014, my dad was diagnosed with late stage neck cancer.  It was a difficult and scary time for me. I admired how hard he fought it and went through months of chemotherapy. His fight against cancer taught me how to keep things in perspective.  Whenever I  think I am having a bad day or things are not going my way, I would just think about how he fought it day after day for over a year.  Gratefully, he is now back to work running his legal practice just as hard as he did before he was diagnosed with cancer.  My dad's experiences taught me the value of hard work and sacrifice, and to never give up even if it means you will experience some failure and set backs on the way. It is from him where I get my my work ethic.

        My mother was born and raised in Supporo, Japan. She first came to the U.S. as a highschool exchange student in Oklahoma.  She could barely speak English at the time. My mother would always tell me how scared she was, but that did not stop her. She worked very hard in school and graduated from SUNY Buffalo.  After college, she became a very successful TV reporter and then producer for one of Japan's major television networks.

        Most of all, however, my mother taught me the importance of social responsibility and family pride. Prior to attending IMG, my mother and I started a special initiative to help the victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. This disaster claimed tens of thousands of lives, many of whom were school children. We started a letter drive as a way to reach out to many Japanese students in the hardest hit areas. I wanted them to know that:  “we’re with you.”  I encouraged fellow students to write letters to the survivors, particularly in Kesennuma (one of the most hardest hit areas). I collected hundreds of letters, which my mother and I had translated from English into Japanese. I then travelled to Kesennuma in 2011 to bring over 500 letters and knapsacks to the children at several schools.

        For these efforts, I was awarded a grant from DoSomething.org.  We purchased I-Pads with the grant money. I gave the I-Pads to the children in Kesennuma. My letter drive was reported in the New York Post. ‎http://nypost.com/2012/10/04/kid-goes-distance-for-japan-victims/. I was very proud of what I accomplished in Kesennuma.

        Even though it has now been several years since my trip to Kesennuma, I will never forget the people I met, and the death and devastation they had to deal with.  Each survivor touched my heart in a very unique and permanent way.  My travels to Kesennuma has forever humbled me in so many ways. Particularly, I learned how life, loved ones, a parent's child or everything you own can be taken away in an instant, and for that reason I take nothing for granted. ‎The survivors of Kesennuma enabled me to appreciate the little things in life even more, especially time spent with my family, friends and teammates.

        I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn early on the importance of sacrifice, hard work and the desire to be compassionate as a person and player. These traits provide even greater significance to me given how much I witnessed first hand that not everyone will have the same chances as me, and how others can easily lose a loved one or all of their possessions in an instant, with no warning. I will always try to make the most of what I have, and make the most of what I do each day, whether it is school work, baseball practice, game or helping friends or a stranger.