Prep Football | A very special team at E-W
EDMONDS - On a living-room table is a framed picture of an Edmonds-Woodway football player wearing No. 21. In a back bedroom, there’s No. 21 again, plastered on the walls covered with newspaper articles about Edmonds-Woodway’s sports teams. On a tiny TV, No. 21 can be seen yet again, weaving his way to another spectacular punt return.
Antoinne Wafer walks in as two teammates ooh and aah while watching game film. Wafer smiles and nods.
This modest Edmonds apartment is where Wafer and his mother, Yolanda Parker, live. Yet Edmonds - more specifically Edmonds-Woodway High School - is home.
Parker’s past is a dark one, filled with drugs, guns and alcohol. But she’s convinced that a miracle brought her and her son to Edmonds and away from her problems in Seattle’s Central District. In a new town, they joined the Edmonds-Woodway football program and have found a new home.
And more family.
“Very difficult years”
Maybe it was the death of her parents. Maybe it was having a baby before a high-school diploma. Maybe it was her older brother being shot and killed when she was 14.
Parker, now 55, fell on hard times growing up in the Central District, losing her parents and brother in the span of four years. The eighth of 10 children, she had to act as a parent to her two younger sisters. Then she had to be a parent to her son Damico, whom she had her senior year at Garfield High School.
“Those were very difficult years,” Parker said. “Everyone was grieving in their own, different way. And mine was to smoke weed.
“It went from one extreme to the next.”
Marijuana, pills, cocaine. Parker felt like she was in a deep hole and couldn’t climb out. Her chaotic life disintegrated in 1985. Parker, then 30 and working as a Metro bus driver, had a crane at a construction site fall in front of the bus she was driving. She narrowly avoided a collision, but says she was later diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“That’s when it just all really, really fell apart,” she said.
Focus on sports
Parker’s life spiraled downward. One day, she found herself at a crack house. She began weeping. That, she says, is the moment God “set me free.”
She began to rebuild her life.
A few years later, Antoinne was born. Parker still lived in a tough section of the Central District, and though she was clean, raising Antoinne was a struggle.
Wafer’s half brother Earl Parker, now 31, was out of the house by then, but remembers Antoinne growing up there.
“When he was born,” said Earl Parker, “my mom was still in that world, so it was a challenging environment for Antoinne.”
Wafer went to the same Seattle middle school as his mother, and saw many of his friends end up in juvenile detention. Sports helped him avoid those problems.
“I’m not going to get into that,” Wafer said about drugs, gangs and guns. “My focus is on sports, because that’s what I always loved to do.”
‘A very special place’
Both Parker and Wafer call what happened next a miracle.
God spoke to her and told her to leave the Central District.
“Your blessing is to the north,” He told her.
Parker, who had lived her entire life in the Central District, thought north meant Montlake, Greenlake or Northgate.
“He spoke into my spirit and said, ‘Edmonds’,” she said. “Edmonds? That’s like sending me to Mongolia!”
Edmonds, the Snohomish County city about 15 miles north of Seattle, wasn’t quite Mongolia, but to Parker and Wafer, it must have seemed that way.
Wafer was leaving his childhood friends and the only place he had called home. But he was quickly accepted by many of the players that now make up the Edmonds-Woodway football and basketball teams.
Warriors quarterback Kyle McCartney is one of those friends.
“It wasn’t hard to get to know him,” said McCartney, who has connected with Wafer for 11 touchdown passes, including three last week in the Warriors’ first-round state playoff win over Snohomish.
“He was fun to be around. He fit right in. He has one of those personalities. He gets along with everybody,” McCartney said.
Team dinners, cookies
His mother quickly felt at home, too.
Parker was invited to sit with the mothers of other players at games and went to weekly team dinners. Neighbors welcomed her and Wafer to their new apartment building with freshly baked cookies.
Peggy McCartney, Kyle’s mother, grew especially close to Parker.
“Yolanda is such a loving, warm woman,” McCartney said. “She just fit right in with us. She had her arms open and we just put them around her. You can’t help but like her.”
Wafer also found his place on the Warriors’ football team. Wafer played well, but the 5-foot-7 receiver was overshadowed by 6-6 receiver Eric Greenwood, who now plays for the University of Idaho.
Wafer got his chance to shine this season for the unbeaten, third-ranked Warriors (11-0), who play Eastlake in the Class 4A state quarterfinals Saturday at Seattle Memorial Stadium. The little guy with the electrifying moves has 34 catches for 706 yards and 11 touchdowns. Wafer also has returned two interceptions, two kickoffs, two punts and a fumble for touchdowns.
“He’s got a lot of fire in him,” said Edmonds-Woodway coach John Gradwohl.
Bright futures
Mother and son have found a new home in Edmonds, and the future seems bright for both. Wafer likely will continue his football career in junior college. Parker works at a school and beams over her son’s high-school football accomplishments.
Sitting next to each other on their living-room couch, they still can’t quite believe their good fortune.
“Being out here in Edmonds is a miracle for us,” said Parker. “The adjustment Antoinne has made, the friends that he has made, the support … my children and my church are my support.”
As Parker began to tear up, Antoinne reached over and patted her shoulder.
“I’ve been healed by many different hurts and disappointments in life by being out here. No place can compare to Edmonds. It is a very special place.”