Friday Features: Union's Morris not ready for rocking chair
By Maurice Patton
Don Morris hasn’t quite gotten the hang of this retirement thing.
A championship golfer at
Union University more than 50 years ago, Morris returned this summer for his third stint as coach at his alma mater.
Officially, that is, considering Morris hasn’t really left the program at the Jackson school since coming back to campus in 1969.
“I’ve just stayed around,” said the 79-year-old Morris, who was named this summer to succeed Andy Rushing as men’s and women’s golf coach with Rushing’s return to the baseball program at the Jackson, Tenn., school as an assistant.
“It’s kept me off the street. It’s kept me young. It’s been a lot of fun.”
A native of Dyersburg – north of Memphis, west of Jackson – Morris arrived at Union as a student to pursue a music degree. As a junior was a member of the school’s Volunteer State Athletic Conference title team in 1959, and a year later, he was the individual VSAC titlist. After graduating in 1962 and spending time as a band director at Chester County High School in nearby Henderson, Morris came back to Union in 1969.
He’s been there since, first as a volunteer before taking on the men’s program in 1973 and continuing as coach until 1999. He stepped down in 1998, but continued as a volunteer coach for three years and was named coach of the Bulldogs again in 2001, remaining in that position for another five years until Rushing came over from baseball in 2006.
Although he’s served as a minister of music with various West Tennessee churches, Morris has stayed close to the golf program and was helping when Rushing decided he wanted to return to the diamond.
“He said he wanted to go back to baseball; we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do,” Morris said. “I’d been working with the teams already, so the natural thing was for me to do it.
“My family thought I’d lost my mind. I committed for one year, and we’ll see how it goes, see what happens next year.”
Though golf is a spring sport, the Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs have participated or will participate in four tournaments this fall – giving the 43-year veteran coach a chance to see what he’ll be working with when the weather warms back up.
The women’s team finished second in a five-team, six-school event in Jackson earlier this week, led by
Lindsey McRee with a two-day 163 and matching 168s by KayCee Lindberg and Rilee Taylor.
Union’s men were seventh out of eight teams in the same two-day tourney, with three freshmen – including
Braxton Rider, who carded a 149 for 12
th place – among the team’s top five scorers.
“It was a tough field, but we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Morris said of the men’s prospects. “By the time we get to the Gulf South Conference season, I think we’ll be 20 strokes better. The women are going to be competitive. I’m excited. We’ve got a lot of talent. The men just need to get some experience.”
That’s one thing Morris won’t be lacking, for sure.
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