Doyle Parrack

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Doyle Parrack was a college men's basketball coach.

Doyle Parrack's lifelong love for the game of basketball began on a dirt court outside of Union Valley School in Cotton County, Oklahoma, during the final days of the Depression. As a sophomore, he would shoot hoops outside of the high school gym that was still under construction. The Daily Oklahoman would later name the young rising star to the all-time 1930s Oklahoma high school basketball team for his achievements on the court.

Parrack would become the first in his family to go to college after graduating from Union Valley in 1939. With a basketball scholarship in hand, he attended Connors State College in Warner, Oklahoma, and then pursued his bachelor's degree at Oklahoma A&M (later Oklahoma State University), and true to his commitment to education, earned his bachelor's degree in secondary education. At OSU, he would forge two longstanding relationships in his career - one with the university and one with the university's basketball coach, Henry Iba. Under Coach Iba's tutelage, Parrack's skills on the court matured. Upon his return from service with the US Marines, he was named a starter on the 1945 National Championship basketball team.

After a brief stint coaching basketball and teaching history at a Shawnee High School, the call of the game brought Parrack back to the court. He played for the Chicago Stags, the NBA predecessor to the world-renowned Chicago Bulls, in 1946-47 and participated in the first televised NBA playoffs game. Despite the newfound fame, Parrack left professional basketball after just one year for the opportunity to coach college basketball at Oklahoma City University.

As head coach and then athletic director at OCU, Coach Parrack transformed the program from a club team without a campus gymnasium or scholarship funding into a national powerhouse. During his eight-year tenure, he led OCU to membership in the NCAA, four consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, and ultimately to two All College tournament championships in 1949 and 1951. Coach Parrack would hold the honor of being the youngest coach to have both played and coached in an NCAA tournament.

And although he was not much older than his players, Coach Parrack was known as a strict but positive disciplinarian. Decades later, his players would recall that Coach Parrack taught them far more than basketball skills. He taught them how to work as a team, appreciate victories, and learn from losses. Some of his players would follow in his foot steps, such as Abe Lemons, who would later coached at OCU, Texas Pan American, and the University of Texas, and Paul Hansen, who coached at OCU and OSU.

In 1955, Coach Parrack accepted an offer to serve as head coach at the University of Oklahoma. In 1959 he was recognized as the conference Coach of the Year after the team tied for second in the Big Eight Conference. Despite his successes at OU, Coach Parrack chose to return to his alma mater in 1962 and served as both the freshman basketball coach and assistant to his longtime mentor, Coach Iba, until Iba's retirement in 1970.

In 1972, Coach Parrack was given the opportunity to build the Israeli national basketball team, taking his players as far as the playoffs in Germany that same year. Six years later, he was named head coach of the OU women's basketball team. He would retire from coaching in 1980.

Despite his departure from the basketball court, Coach Parrack never gave up teaching. Upon leaving OU, he took on a new challenge - serving as a probation officer for the Oklahoma City Juvenal Bureau and sharing with troubled youth the same life lessons his players had valued years before.

Coach Parrack continues to follow basketball from his home in Perkins, Oklahoma, with his wife of 54 years, Charlotte. They have two sons, two daughters, and seven grandchildren, including the world-renowned cartographer Andrew Parrack of Tulsa, Oklahoma.