By Duane Cochran
For the Times West Virginian
FAIRMONT —
Parker Deem is Fairmont State’s jack of all trades.
A fifth-year senior linebacker, who is a converted fullback. Deem can play all three inside linebacker spots in FSU’s 3-3-5 odd stack defense and if the truth be known he plays them pretty well.
But most people don’t know that because, with all due respect, Deem is a bit of an unknown.
Deem, who’s father Jeff lettered at linebacker for West Virginia University in 1981 and 1982, is not a rah-rah player, but instead a guy who shows up for work every day with a very business-like attitude.
“I’ve always been sort of a humble player,” he admits. “I’m never too high or never too low, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have certain expectations for myself and more importantly for our team. I want to prove this fall I can be a solid, dominating-type of linebacker in this league.”
At 6-foot and 220-pounds Deem, who was recruited to FSU by former coach and current athletic director Rusty Elliott out of Ripley High School to play fullback, isn’t the most physically imposing linebacker. He also isn’t the fastest, strongest or most athletically gifted, but he may very well be one of the smartest. The 22-year-old, who moved to the defensive side of the ball his redshirt sophomore season, learned quickly that knowledge is power and he wanted to be extremely strong in that area.
“I am undersized and I’m certainly not the fastest linebacker, but I try to make up for that by making sure I know every single part of the defense,” said Deem, who is majoring in nutrition with a minor in psychology. “I want to know what every single player on our defense is doing at all times.
“I watch a lot of film. I watch us and I watch as much as possible on our opponents. My goal every game when I’m in the game is to know, based on formations or personnel, what the other team is going to run. I take pride in knowing what we all need to do and what the objective of the other team is. I’ve always believed you can’t prepare yourself enough.”
Deem finished ninth on the team last fall in total tackles with 32, 23 of which were solo stops. He had five tackles for losses, one fumble recovery and blocked one kick. This year both Deem and FSU’s coaches expect those numbers to increase.
“Parker Deem had a great fall camp for us,” said FSU coach Mike Lopez. “I’m really happy for him because I think he’s really grown over the past year or two as a player. When you go through a 3-8 season and you go through winter workouts, spring drills and summer as a coach you look for those veterans and seniors who came back in the fall having really, really changed their mindsets and he has.
“He’s had a few nagging injuries, but we can’t keep him out of practice. I think he’d fist-fight somebody if we tried to keep him out. He flipped the switch so to speak and he’s really ready to lead this team. I’m very excited about he and Dan’s (fellow inside linebacker Dan Dario) leadership abilities. They’ve done a great job so far with our young kids.”
Deem lettered in five sports in high school and helped lead Ripley to the 2004 Class AAA state baseball title. However, he and the Falcons’ other nine seniors have only experienced one winning season together at Fairmont. This fall one of his main goals is to see that change.
“The winning season we had back in 2007 was nice, but it wasn’t what I expected when I came here,” he said. “I expected us to have winning seasons every year and for us to compete for titles. That hasn’t been the case.
“Last year we were very optimistic and very confident going into the season and things really went bad for us (the Falcons finished 3-8). To be quite honest it was a very humbling experience for us as players. But I believe all of us who went through that learned something from it. I really hope we did. I know I did.
“Our motto is stay humble. You can see the attitude on this team right now is different from last year. It’s a humble environment. We all know what we want to do as a team and we know what we need to do to be successful. It’s up to us right now to take care of our business and do it.”
