6-time state champ Wise football head coach DaLawn Parrish steps down
UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (DC News Now) — As the clock hit zero, DaLawn Parrish walked across the field in Annapolis on December 1, 2023.
As he shook hand’s with his opponent, hugged his players, and hoisted the Maryland 4A state championship trophy – he knew it would be his last moment on the field as the head coach of Henry A. Wise Jr. high school’s football team.
He knew. But almost nobody else did.
“I knew it was the end for me. I knew it was the end at Wise high school,” Parrish told DC News Now. “I had already contemplated it, I discussed it with my wife. And it was time. But I wanted to make sure I gave my last players everything that I had to try to reach the goal that they set at the beginning of the season.”
Wise defeated Broadneck in that game, 21-0. It marked Parrish’s sixth Maryland 4A state title, tying the record set by Bob Milloy (Springbrook).
Parrish is the only head coach in the history of Wise’s football program. He was hired in 2006 when the school opened. With six titles, he’s won a state championship in a third of the season’s he’s coached at Wise.
Parrish said he’s stepping away to spend more time with his family, who he credits with the success of Wise football just as much as his himself.
“My family sacrificed a lot,” Parrish said. “I have four children and it’s been kind of tough these last couple of years.”
Parrish has coached hundreds, maybe more than a thousand student athletes at Wise. Many have gone on to play at the next level. Two have gone on to play in Super Bowls – Ryan Smith with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021 and Zach Pascal with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023.
Parrish often fostered relationships with his players and their families before they were on the team. Former Wise quarterback Jabari Laws, who graduated from the school in 2017, said that Parrish met with him and his family when he was in eighth grade, and sold him “on trusting the process and becoming a Puma.”
Laws told DC News Now,” the rest was history.”
Laws was along for the ride as the starting quarterback for two of Parrish’s six titles leading the program. He went on to play Division I football at Army and is now based in West Texas performing his service.
Speaking about Parrish’s impact on his football career and life, Laws couldn’t stop smiling.
“I had the honor of just coached by one of the greatest in my opinion, obviously,” Laws said. “What he’s done in so little time and with the amount of people and with the people he had. It’s just amazing in my opinion.”
Athletic Director Jason Gordon got to the school a few years into Parrish’s time leading the football team. With a front row seat to Parrish’s impressive tenure, Gordon looks at the long time coach as if he’s his own brother.
“Watching him grow the program from literally the ground up, from its infancy to now,” Gordon said. “Watching him help grow young boys and watch them mature into men, that’s what he’s meant to the community.”
Before coaching, Parrish was a standout defensive back at Wake Forest. He spent some time as an assistant coach in his native area of Howard County, Maryland and eventually became head coach at Duval high school in Prince George’s County, before taking over at Wise.
While Parrish has walked across the field for his final postgame handshake as a head coach, he doesn’t doubt that all that have or will don the blue and yellow at Wise, will continue his legacy and hear his message.
“Continue to be the best individual that you can be. Give 110 percent in everything you do,” Parrish said. “Strive to leave a legacy that others can follow. And you have a moral responsibility to be the best person in general, that other people can look up to you and want to achieve.”
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