Emma Gray
Editor
Brian Cafarelli is a professor of speech in the department of fine and applied arts. He teaches public speaking and interpersonal communication. Cafarelli is also the coach of Parkland’s speech and debate team.
Cafarelli says he was inspired to pursue communication after hearing the power that the spoken word can have.
“I was a young person [when] I heard the Reverend Jesse Jackson speak at my college and he inspired me with rhetoric and by watching other people be inspired by him,” Cafarelli said. “This was one of my life changing moments to follow communication.”
Cafarelli says that he has continued to find communication to be one of the most powerful forces.
“From employment to social settings, the words people say define them [and] accentuate their attributes. They create opportunities. They take away opportunities,” he said. “We live [in] a world in communication, from storytelling to your children to sentences in jury trials.”
Cafarelli came to Parkland after teaching at another college and then being in the banking industry for a number of years. When looking for a job, Cafarelli said he was looking to be a debate coach as he had been previously at another college and he wanted to teach communication again.
“I applied for one job in the entire country because it fit everything I wanted to do,” Cafarelli said.
Cafarelli says he enjoys debate because it keeps him up to date on various issues facing the world, such as different social or political matters.
Outside of Parkland, Cafarelli is a husband and a father to two boys. He enjoys spending time bonding with his family through activities like playing and coaching hockey and racing boats.
All of the members who are old enough in the family race hydroplane boats competitively in national competitions.
“I finished fourth in the country last year in my racing events,” Cafarelli said. “My wife finished second in the country and I think my [older] son finished 12th or 14th in the country.”
Hydroplanes are smaller boats that can reach speeds of up to 100 mph according to Cafarelli.
Cafarelli says the family is not able to practice around town because of the lack of water and abundance of corn, but the family does travel quite a bit to pursue the sport.
“We travel everywhere from California to Florida to New York. But most of the time we stay in the Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana area,” he said.
Cafarelli says the family’s commitment to boat racing started with his own father, who started racing as a child.
“I got into boat racing because my dad [raced] back in the ‘70s when you could go to any marina anywhere and just become a boat racer. He did it as a child and my father and mother met at a boat race,” Cafarelli said. “So I think boat racing has pretty much been in my life even before I had a life.”
Cafarelli says he enjoys the many aspects of racing, all the way from building the boats to competition, and how he can involve his family with something he loves.
“For me personally, boat racing is a mix of all of the different interests I have in life. I work on our own motors. I build boats by crafting them…I enjoy the strategy of competitive racing.”
Aside from racing boats, Cafarelli also plays hockey in a men’s team and coaches his older son’s hockey team. He says playing hockey has always been a dream of his.
“I grew up playing soccer and I always wanted to play hockey, and then once I finally got a job and I could pay my bills I decided to learn how to play hockey,” Cafarelli said.
Once his son started playing, Cafarelli says the family got even more into the sport, so much so that they put a plastic hockey rink in their basement to practice year-round.