Ball State University Athletics
Sue Parks Leaving Ball State to Return to Her Alma Mater
July 28, 2006 | Track & Field
Parks guided the Cardinals to eight Mid-American Conference titles and 10 runner-up finishes in 12 seasons of coaching indoor track and field, outdoor track and field and cross country at Ball State.
She led Ball State to MAC Indoor Track Championships in 1996, 1998 and 2001, outdoor league titles in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2001, and the school's lone cross country conference championship in 2003.
In addition to the team successes, Parks tutored the only women's track and field NCAA national champion -- LaTasha Jenkins -- in the 200-meter dash in 1999. She also coached Patricia Soman, who became the first female in Ball State history to earn multiple All-America honors in an indoor season when she posted an eighth-place finish at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in the long jump and triple jump in 2003, and finished ninth in the long jump and 13th in the triple jump at the outdoor national meet. Parks also tutored Katie Nowak, who became the first Ball State female cross country student-athlete to qualify for the national championships, and Jill Scully, who qualified for the national cross country meet in 2005.
All totalled, Parks coached six NCAA All-Americans, seven MAC Championship Meet Most Valuable Performers, 70 individual MAC Champions and 12 relay teams to conference titles.
The president of the Women's Cross Country Coaches Association, Parks was named the MAC Women's Coach of the Year eight times -- three times in indoor track, four times in outdoor track and once in cross country. She was named the NCAA District Coach of the Year in both indoor and outdoor track in 1998.
Prior to becoming Ball State's head coach, Parks served as the assistant track and field and cross country coach for men and women at the University of Arizona from 1990-94. She was the head women's cross country coach and assistant women's track and field coach at Michigan State from 1988-90. Parks was a graduate assistant coach for Eastern Michigan's men's team in 1987-88, and spent from 1984-87 as the head women's cross country coach and assistant women's track and field coach at Michigan. From 1979-83, Parks coched high school cross country and track and field.
A 1980 graduate of Eastern Michigan, Parks was a MAC Cross Country individual champion in 1976, 1977 and 1978 plus was an Olympic Trials qualifier. She was inducted into the EMU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992. Her father, Bob Parks, was the head men's track and field and cross country coach at Eastern Michigan for 34 years from 1967-2000.
