TIM PARSEL

Steve Virgen

From making sure every young athlete had a belt on for flags to

dealing with coaching changes, it’s safe to say Tim Parsel’s career

began humbly.

Parsel, who is now the boys athletic director at Estancia High,

worked for Newport Beach parks and recreation, coaching flag

football, while attending Long Beach State. But the time he spent

developing young athletes spawned a high school coaching career that

started at Newport Harbor, where quarterback Gordon Adams was excited

to reunite with his coach from his flag football days.

Adams, who went on to play at USC, wasn’t the only reason Parsel

started coaching with the Sailors. Parsel, who graduated from Newport

Harbor, received a phone call from one his former teachers, Fred

Peterson, who told him of an opening as an assistant with the Sailors

football team in 1973.

Parsel also coached basketball and became an assistant at Newport,

for Jerry DeBusk. Eventually, basketball became the sport he coached

and now he is working as the boys athletic director at Estancia.

“I never really thought about being an A.D.,” Parsel said. “But

when I was coaching at Newport, the ball started rolling from there.

I had a real fantastic coaching experience. We upset the No. 1 seed

in the CIF playoffs, St. Paul. That was in 1976. That was a pretty

fun time.”

Parsel said he learned a great deal about how to deal with people

from DeBusk, as well as then-football coach Bill Pizzica.

While Parsel was at Newport Harbor, the head coaching job for the

Costa Mesa boys basketball team opened up, and, as Parsel put it,

“things kind of fell into place.” Parsel began coaching for the

Mustangs in the 1979-80 school year.

It was a return for Parsel, who attended the high school when he

was a freshman. While at Costa Mesa, Parsel pointed to one highlight

as his favorite, which came in 1982.

The Mustangs played in the same league with Corona del Mar,

Estancia and Newport Harbor. Because it was an eight-team league, the

Mustangs played three games in one week. Toward the end of the

season, Costa Mesa was faced with the challenge of having to win its

final three games to reach the playoffs.

The three games were against CdM, Estancia and Newport. Parsel

said, CdM and Estancia were among the top teams in Orange County at

the time.

The Mustangs made it a clean sweep of the three Newport-Mesa

schools and made the playoffs for the first time in three years,

Parsel said.

Parsel was at Costa Mesa from 1979-85. In 1985, his daughter,

Tori, was born and Parsel said he wanted to be an assistant coach

again. However, that plan was held off for a bit, as Parsel went back

to Newport and took over for DeBusk, who took a one-year sabbatical.

When DeBusk returned, Parsel was his assistant for the next five

years, until DeBusk moved on to Chapman. Parsel then went to work on

his master’s degree and later returned to Newport Harbor to be an

assistant to Bob Serven in the early 1990s.

Parsel said he did not think he would become head varsity coach,

but when he earned his master’s degree, he found out Tim O’Brien left

as coach at Estancia to take over the men’s program at Orange Coast

College.

From 1992 to ‘96, Parsel coached the Eagles at Estancia.

“I had some real great players,” Parsel said. “Jim Faulkner was an

All-CIF player in my first year. My last two years, I had great

groups of kids. The last two years we won 25 games in one season and

23 in the next. Just great kids.”

Parsel said he enjoys his work as Estancia’s athletic director

because of the people he comes in contact with. Coaching was an

experience that got him where he is and he is grateful for those

days, as well.

“The most fun thing about coaching and being the A.D. is the great

people you meet,” Parsel said. “I’ve made some very good friends. And

the outstanding kids you coach, it’s great. It’s like teaching an

advanced class, because you get the best kids. It has been very

rewarding. See them going on and being successful really makes you

feel good.”

Parsel, 54, the latest Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame honoree,

lives in Irvine with his wife, Lori. They have two children, Tori and

a boy, Weston, who will play basketball at Northwood next year.

O’Brien coaches at Northwood, where O’Brien’s son, Chris, will also

play on the team.