Christine Parris picked up her phone, saw the Las Vegas area code, and was perplexed.
“Who could this be,” she wondered, “and what could it possibly be about?”
The reaction was understandable, given that Parris lives and works in her native Canada and hadn’t called Las Vegas home in a quarter century.
Intrigued, she accepted the call instead of sending it to voicemail. After some quick pleasantries, the reason for the reach out was revealed: The 1991 UNLV softball team that Parris played for had been selected for induction into the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame.
“Of course, I was super elated and almost started crying,” she says.
The tears would start to flow a beat later when a second piece of good news was unveiled: Parris also was chosen for individual induction into the Hall of Fame in recognition of two remarkable seasons here.
“I absolutely did not see that coming,” Parris says of the multiple inductions, which she learned of in early March. “But it means everything, because this place [UNLV] was a second home to me.”
Which, with hindsight, is remarkable. Because only a few months before accepting a scholarship from UNLV softball coaching legend Shan McDonald, the university wasn’t on her radar.
In fact, she knew so little about Las Vegas that when she arrived for her recruiting visit on a sweltering June day, she was wearing patent leather shoes.
“I had no idea about the heat,” Parris recalled prior to the 2024 Hall of Fame induction ceremony on May 17 at the Thomas & Mack Center. “I remember the athlete who took me around during my visit asked, ‘Do you want some flip flops?’ Because my feet were on fire. She took the shoes off her feet, gave them to me, and we toured campus — which I thought was incredible.”
It definitely was a far cry from the junior college that Parris was reluctantly attending in Neosho, Missouri.
She was steered toward that college by the head softball coach at Kansas University, who got a tip about Parris from an umpire who worked games involving her high school team in Scarborough, Ontario.
Unfortunately for Parris, Kansas was unable to offer a scholarship because she never took the ACT or SAT college entrance exams. That forced her to go the junior college route for two years to gain the requisite eligibility to play for a four-year university.
“I always thought I was good enough to play in college [in the U.S.]. I just had no frame of reference for what that looked like or what the process was,” Parris says. “I just figured somebody would find me and something would happen.”
Something did happen, thanks to Brian Kolze. Then an assistant coach under UNLV’s McDonald, Kolze discovered Parris at her junior college in Missouri, and he invited her to campus on a recruiting trip.
The Rebels’ softball team had just completed a mediocre 32-28 season, and the coaching staff viewed Parris and similarly talented recruits as keys to taking the then five-year-old program to the next level.
During her campus visit, Parris quickly fell for what she says was a “big school with a really small-town feel.” So, she signed her scholarship offer — then quickly proved she was worth every penny of that scholarship’s worth.
The relevant highlights of Parris’ first season as a Rebel: Playing shortstop, she collected 84 hits and batted .398 (at the time, both were school records), and helped lead her team to a program-best 41-27 record.
Not only did that 1990 squad crack the Top 25 rankings and reach the NCAA tournament for the first time, but it advanced to the Women’s College World Series. For her efforts, Parris was named third-team All-America, second-team All-Region, and Big West Conference Player of the Year.
Although she shifted to third base the following year, Parris didn’t miss a beat. She hit .356, added 16 extra-base hits to the 24 she had in 1990, and was a huge reason why the Rebels went 47-16, returned to the Women’s College World Series, and finished the 1991 season ranked No. 5 in the nation.
As was the case in 1990, Parris earned third-team All-America and second-team All-Region honors as a senior. To this day, she’s one of just five UNLV softball players to make an All-America team in multiple seasons. Also, her .377 career batting average still ranks third all time.
“We had a surreal [combination] of a lot of incredibly talented athletes, no egos, and everyone really knowing their roles,” Parris says of her two seasons as a Rebel. “You’re rarely on a team with no drama. And while I’m sure there were some disagreements, they never affected us between the lines. We were there for a common purpose: We all loved the game.”
It was not, however, the only game that Parris loved. Basketball was her main sport in high school, and she was good enough that Western Michigan recruited her during her junior season.
Parris passed on that opportunity, though, because it didn’t align with her ultimate athletic goal: to represent her home country in the Olympics. That goal, she realized, was much easier to reach through softball.
Still, after exhausting her softball eligibility at UNLV, Parris had an itch to lace up her high tops in a competitive environment one more time. She asked then-UNLV coach Jim Bolla if she could try out for his 1991-92 squad. He agreed, liked what he saw, and offered her a roster spot — as a nonscholarship walk-on.
No dice, Parris thought.
“He said, ‘We’re going to have you be part of the team.’ And I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to offer me a scholarship. Because I’m from Canada, and while softball is taking care of my academic [expenses], I’d need the rest covered by you,” she says. “I could tell he wasn’t sure how to respond. But he ultimately said, ‘Sure, that works.’”
Although Parris was, by her own assessment, a solid practice player, she didn’t receive much court time during her lone season on the hardwood. Still, being a two-sport scholarship athlete was — and remains — extremely rare. And it only added to her UNLV legacy and Hall of Fame credentials.
After graduating (’92 BS Education), Parris worked for two years in UNLV’s athletics department, eventually departing for an assistant coaching position with the Bowling Green University softball team. Along the way, she continued to train as a player in hopes of landing a spot on Canada’s national team.
Parris did just that, and in 1996, she was one of 15 women to suit up for Team Canada in the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Shortly after her Olympic experience, Parris returned to Las Vegas, initially to take advantage of the ideal training weather as she looked to continue her playing career. (She ended up spending two seasons with the Tampa Bay franchise in the Women’s Professional Fastpitch League.)
However, a few weeks after Parris returned to the desert, an assistant coach position on McDonald’s staff opened up. She applied for the gig, got it, and spent two seasons (1997-98) tutoring the next generation of Rebel softball players.
“It was great to come back and be part of the university again,” Parris says. “And of course I was ecstatic to have a chance to give back.”
Just as ecstatic as she would be some 25 years later upon answering a random phone call and learning that she would be forever immortalized in the UNLV Athletics Hall of Fame.
