Tyler Parker's recruitment has gone viral after photo
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - All this attention from an innocuous photo taken at the Gardena YMCA.
Tyler Parker’s life has changed in many ways over the last two weeks after getting an extra weightlifting session in during his niece’s swim meet at the Y off Artesia Blvd. and now the 14-year-old has coaches from some of the nation’s best programs following him on social media.
It’s fitting that social media played such a big role in his recruitment because that’s where the photo originated - on Twitter - that caught the attention of so many coaches and fans: Parker, shirtless, flexing and looking like The Incredible Hulk.
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To the 2025 defensive tackle from Rancho Santa Margarita (Calif.) Santa Margarita Catholic, he cannot believe the attention.
“It was all over every social media and it was really exciting,” Parker said last weekend at the Battle at the Beach tournament. “A lot has come with that and I’m prepared to take that on.
“I was at the YMCA and my niece was doing a swim meet and I felt like going to get some extra work in by myself. I felt like I looked big and I just took a photo and from there I just posted it on Twitter and it did it itself.
“There’s a lot of flexing my muscles and the way it went viral like that, it was just a blessing.”
Like everything on social media, there were critics of Parker’s post. There were also lots of compliments and awestruck onlookers who could not believe he’s so massive at his age. His Twitter post alone had more than 2,600 likes. Media companies who tweeted it had far more.
The attention has been exhilarating and surprising at the same time.
“It’s a lot because there were a lot of hate comments and there were a lot of love comments,” Parker said. “A lot of people, random people to family members, saw it. It was a blessing for me to be as young as I am, 14-years-old, for that to happen just from a half-naked photo is crazy.”
Parker’s workout regimen for someone who cannot even drive himself to the gym is pretty wild as well. He can bench 320 pounds, hang clean 225, hang snatch 195 and deadlift around 515 or “probably more,” he said.
That’s not all.
“Really just constantly grinding,” Parker said. “Doing 100 pushups, 200 pushups every night by myself. Wake up in the morning and do the same thing.”
All of this attention has bolstered his early recruitment as well. Arizona has already offered but programs like Ole Miss, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Colorado and Oregon have also reached out.
All from this photo.
“Mostly everywhere in the past week,” Parker said. “The whole Oklahoma staff followed me, the head coach did, the whole North Carolina State staff did, the whole Georgia staff followed me so it was really cool to see the reigning national champs follow me and start recruiting me.”