Long time reporter and volunteer rounds out the 2019 class in Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame

Feb 26, 2019 | 6:51 AM

KAMLOOPS — The class of 2019 for the Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame was completed this morning when the Hall of Fame Committee announced that long time sports reporter and volunteer Tony Parker has joined the list of inductees. 

Parker has spent most of his life involved in writing about, or volunteering in, the sports world. 

He wrote a high school column for the Salmon Arm Observer when still in his teens in Sorrento.

He made his reputation covering sports for the old Kamloops News-Advertiser, and then the Daily Sentinel.

He went to Alberta for some time, working in Fairview and Lethbridge, before coming back in 1994. 

The last 25 years, Parker has devoted himself to volunteering in an organizational and reporting capacity for a variety of community sports groups, including high school and junior football, the Overlander Cross Country Ski Club, Major Men’s fastball, soccer, minor baseball and minor hockey, and the list goes on.

Parker turns 71 in April.

As the media world has changed, and fewer resources are committed to in-person attendance by reporters at sports events, Parker’s work reporting on events including provincial tournaments held here has provided coverage in areas where it would not otherwise be possible. 

Parker will join broadcaster Earl Seitz, the late Ted Pierson, Paddy Harrington and the Kamloops Rugby Club as inductees during the May 11th ceremonies at the Coast Canadian Conference Centre.