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t’s late summer in 2019 and Parker Stewart (‘19) hasn’t yet laced up his sneakers, drained a contested three-pointer or brought the Elam Center crowd to its feet after a thunderous fast break dunk. But his impact as a Skyhawk has already been felt. Parker has completed the academic requirements to earn a bachelor’s degree from UT Martin. It took him all of two years. Parker, who wowed local fans as well as some of the nation’s top collegiate basketball coaches at nearby Union City High School as recently as 2017, became the first Skyhawk student-athlete to earn a degree in such a short amount of time. The remarkable feat began in the summer of 2017. Ranked as the third-best basketball prospect in the state of Tennessee, Parker chose to begin his collegiate career at the University of Pittsburgh. Having not taken any Advanced Placement courses in high school, he enrolled early to get a head start on his academics. Parker breezed through six credit hours with all A’s on his transcript. It would be a sign of things to come. While national media pundits noticed Parker’s athletic prowess (he set a Pittsburgh freshman record with 71 three-pointers made), he was also making waves in the classroom. There he was, going off for 23 points and knocking down seven 3-pointers at national powerhouse Syracuse. He also took 17.5 hours of classes in the fall and 15.5 hours in the spring. Parker’s father, Anthony, the men’s basketball head coach at UT Martin, kept up with his son from 650 miles away and made sure that both his academic and athletic potential were maximized. “When Parker went to Pittsburgh, I actually called their academic adviser,” said Anthony, who is in his fourth season at the helm of the Skyhawk program. “Parker only had 12 or 13 hours scheduled in the fall, and I said ‘no, you better give him 18.’ Parker wasn’t just trying to do the norm or just trying to get by. He was capable of college-level work and that was our expectation as parents.” Parker ranked second in the Atlantic Coast Conference in three-point field goal percentage (.425) in conference play and was also one of just 30 players to make the 2018 All-ACC Academic Men’s Basketball Team. However, a coaching change at Pittsburgh caused him to rethink his plans. “I was going to major in speech pathology at Pittsburgh, but I hadn’t gotten into that yet. I was just getting the general requirements out of the way,” Parker