Spartan fans on hand at last week’s 70-31 victory over Hitchcock-Tulare witnessed a milestone in the making as junior Parker Graff sunk his 1,000th career point.
Coach Joey Mitchell said its no secret that making it into the exclusive 1,000 point club takes hard work and dedication, something that Graff has displayed throughout his student athlete career.
“Parker is a gifted young man who works extremely hard behind the scenes...basketball is a game of a lot of skill and fine tuning those skills,” Coach Mitchell explained. “As you’ve seen the last couple years from watching Parker, he puts a lot of time in on his own, along with individual and group workouts. It’s a lot of hard work and time behind the scenes that no one sees.”
As for Graff, he said he’s excited about the accomplishment but quickly returns to the work the team needs to do as a whole.
“I would say it’s pretty neat reaching the 1000 club especially as a junior,” he shared. “I’m more focused on making sure the team is ready for regionals and hopefully state like we planned.”
Coach Mitchell shared an inside joke he and Graff have that is a testament to his dedication.
“We have a little inside joke, ‘they sleep.’ This refers to the early mornings he shows up to meet me to workout — and it’s almost every single morning. I have record of his workouts from last year with me alone, outside of basketball open gym and practices. We did 140 of those, to put into perspective the dedication it takes to be ‘good,’” Mitchell said. “But it’s especially the days you don’t feel like it that the dedication becomes clear. We are ‘working’ while they are ‘sleeping.’”