All sorts of commendations and congratulations will go to each person inducted into the Centre Country Sports Hall of Fame this Sunday. And that is altogether appropriate for these remarkable individuals. But from where I sit, there’s one who merits extra attention. He is William “Willie” Morse, a four-year basketball starter for State College Area High School who later played for Colgate University.
So why do I think Willie should get a second slice of cheesecake at the Hall of Fame dinner? Are my State College roots causing me to favor him over folks like Kristin Irwin Zuhlke, one of Bellefonte’s all-time greats in volleyball, basketball and softball, or Don Lucas, the legendary softball coach at Bald Eagle Area?
No, not at all. Willie Morse happens to deserve special recognition because:
- The 2003 PIAA championship won by Morse and his elite teammates is still the only state basketball title ever captured by a Centre County high school team.
- Willie was a clutch player who scored 33 points in the championship game. His performance in the 76-71 overtime win against mighty Chester ranks him third all-time for scorers in the PIAA Class AAAA title game, behind NBA stars Billy Owens and Kobe Bryant.
- Morse, now 40, set an early example for today’s up-and-coming athletes. How many other elementary school students would arise from bed at 5:45 a.m. to practice shooting as Willie did in the late 1990s?
Convinced? I hope so. None other than radio broadcaster Jeff Byers agrees with me on Willie Morse’s tremendous accomplishments. Jeff will emcee Sunday’s induction ceremony, so he’s not eager to compare the various honorees. But I like his summary of Willie: “That 2003 team was very special, and what he brought to that team in terms of leadership, clutch performances and the ability to make others better…to me, he goes down as one of the all-time greats in Centre County sports.”
Former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, a longtime friend of Willie’s dad, Mike, offers further support. “He was a tremendous athlete who had a great high school career,” says Curley. “What that team did was really incredible.”
I must add one more element to my affirmation of Willie Morse: the human drama that is encapsulated in his life. Here’s an individual who came within a whisker of death at age six when epiglottitis put him in a coma for several days. And then he actually “died”—clinically speaking—as a 20-year-old when he was hit by lightning. Furthermore, he supported his father and mentor, Mike Morse, during the latter’s many life-threatening experiences. But first, let’s get back to basketball.
TOURNAMENT CHALLENGES
The 2003 playoffs began dismally for State College when the Little Lions dropped their District 6 title game to Altoona, 39-37. But they still had hope for a PIAA title since the selection system of that time allowed each district’s second place team to join the state tournament field.
There was a price tag attached to the Altoona loss, however. Because of their second-place status in District 6, the Lions had to travel to Greensburg where they would play the Hempfield High Spartans, one of that city’s teams.
After a nip-and-tuck battle with the Spartans and their partisan crowd, State College found itself down by one point with 10 seconds left. Coach Drew Frank then called a play that would yield a good shot for Willie, a junior who was the team captain. Alas, one of Morse’s teammates blew an assignment, the play was busted and Willie heaved a desperation shot. Only the heroics of Jon Stupar saved the team from elimination as he caught Willie’s airball and put it in the hoop for the win.
After that squeaker over Hempfield, State College won two more PIAA tournament games by a total of nine points. And then the Little Lions met Altoona…again. This time, the boys from State High showed their real ability in a 59-34 win. “It was real sweet to spank them in the Western Finals,” says Willie.
A SHINING MOMENT
So then only Chester High School stood in the way of State College’s state title dream. But the Clippers had previously appeared in 12 state finals and had won seven while the Centre County team had never played in a PIAA championship game.
“Nobody thought we had a chance at winning,” says Willie, “but we were dialed in. I’d never had a sense of feeling better going into a game as an individual and as a team.”
Led by Morse’s hot shooting, State College posted a 32-27 halftime lead, but Chester used a 19-10 run to close out the third quarter with a 52-44 lead. Then, according to Willie, “We whittled it back and we were up by a point and then, with no time left on the clock, the ref called a foul (on Gabe Norwood during a scramble for a loose ball).”
Chester’s Kenny Tribbett made just one of two free throws, however, and the game went to overtime. Willie then scored eight of State High’s 16 points in the extra period, including 6-for-6 on foul shots. His final game stats showed 11-for-18 shooting from the floor, including 5-for-10 from three-point range, but he was much more thrilled by the team’s accomplishment.
“In my mind,” he says, “that was the most talented team to ever play at State High in any sport. If you look at the starting five, two played in the NFL (Stupar and Jordan Norwood) and two played Division 1 basketball (Gabe Norwood and himself). I was arguably the worst athlete of the starting five, and I made the All-State team the next year as a senior.”
EARLY DREAMS
Lots of kids have dreams. But Willie Morse is different from most of them because his dreams started earlier and propelled him forward more dramatically.
His dad will never forget his first realization that Willie really loved basketball. Mike was serving as an assistant under Penn State’s head basketball coach, Bruce Parkhill, when the team was spending halftime in a Rec Hall locker room during a 1989 game against Lehigh.
“We could hear the fans cheering,” says Mike, “and we’re wondering what’s going on. There was no halftime show that night. But as we opened the door and looked out on the court, there was Willie dribbling up and down the court. He was barely three years old, and I thought, ‘Holy mackerel!’”
Plenty of fathers push their sons or daughters to play a particular sport, but there was no pushing in the Morse household. “He made the decision to play basketball 100 percent,” says Mike. “We had a Fisher Price hoop, and he would spend hours on his own in the basement shooting at that hoop. When I started the OLV (Our Lady of Victory) Hoops League and he was in maybe second grade, he handled the ball well enough to play with sixth graders.”
Willie nods as his father speaks, and then he takes up the story. “I was so passionate about basketball as far back as I can remember. Once I acknowledged to him that that’s what I wanted, he was all in on getting me where I wanted to go.”
Meanwhile, it seems the same principle applied with Willie’s younger sister, Hallie. After she showed great interest in volleyball, father Mike and mother Karen got behind her passion just as they had with their son’s. The result? Hallie became a two-time All-State setter for State High and earned a scholarship to Syracuse (she later transferred to UNC Asheville).
“When there was a sense that scholarships were probably going to happen,” says Willie, “we were all locked in. My sister came to all my games and supported my journey. I supported her journey.” And how about the parents? “We got our passion from Dad,” notes Willie. “We got our groundedness from Mom. Mom’s the leveling force for everything.”
A FINGERTIP TRIAL
Years earlier, an injury struck Willie—in a church of all places—that could have halted his dreams while they were still forming. The Morses were visiting Karen’s family in Huntingdon, and they attended a special function at the Catholic church there. For some reason, Willie stood still in a double door entry at the church that had one huge wooden door open and the other was closed. And then the open door slammed shut with Willie’s finger in its way.
Instantly, the tip of the middle finger on Willie’s right hand—his shooting hand—was sliced off. That evening, the six-year-old boy posed a question to his dad that underlined his total focus on hoops. “Dad,” he said, “why would Jesus take the end of my finger off when he knows how much I love basketball? And while I’m at church…”
“I didn’t have an answer for him at the time,” says Mike. “Then he looked at me and said, ‘Maybe he wants me to develop my weak hand.’”
The youngster may have given a good answer to his own question, but it seemed the Lord had a better one. As Willie now remembers, “We didn’t know what to do. But it just so happened that one of the best medical specialists in the country for fingers and toes was visiting his family in Huntingdon that weekend and he saw me.”
According to Mike, “He said, ‘We can either take the piece and sew it back on—but he’s not going to have any feeling or function. Or there’s this experimental thing that might work because he’s young and growing quickly. We can trim the bone back at an angle like you’d trim a rose bush, and he may get some of the growth back.’ So that’s what we did, and it worked.”
PAYING THE PRICE
Having overcome that fingertip crisis, Willie did what he always did and returned to practice. Lots of practice. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred kids would not have done what I did,” he says candidly. “When I was in fifth grade, I was getting up at 5:30 or 5:45 to ride my bike a half mile to the school, shooting for 45 minutes and then riding home for breakfast. Five days a week. And on the weekends, going to Orchard Park and shoveling the snow off the outdoor court so I could shoot.”
Fueled by his passion and validated by his skill, Willie consistently played at levels above his age group. As a seventh and eighth grader, he started for the State High freshman team, and he set a single game record for that program by scoring 40 points against the Williamsport freshmen.
By the time Willie got to ninth grade, he had gained further experience by playing on AAU teams from New Jersey, and he was ready to start for State High’s varsity. His four-year career produced a thrilling record of 87-28 including the PIAA title in 2003 and a PIAA semifinal appearance in 2004 (a loss to Penn Hills).
LIGHTNING STRIKES
Both Mike and Willie are big outdoorsmen, so it wasn’t anything unusual for them to take a wilderness fishing trip to the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario in August of 2005. Joining them on their journey were Mike’s best friend, Eric Fabian, and his 8-year-old son, Tanner. The four of them were delighted to camp on a remote island in the middle of nowhere.
But delight turned to concern when a severe thunderstorm approached. The four took shelter in their tent, a good place to avoid the rain but not to avoid lightning. Suddenly a lighting bolt hit Willie, then Mike and then Eric. Only Tanner was not hit, and he later said the bodies of the other three were tossed upward by the force of the energy.
As the first to be struck, Willie took the brunt of the lightning’s force, and the two injured adults thought he had passed away. “Willie had convulsions,” recalls Mike, “and then he gave the death sigh and then he just laid there. Eric looked at me and said, ‘I’m really sorry that Willie died.’”
But somehow, inexplicably, the younger Morse began to show signs of life. Later, after a Canadian search and rescue team got the four to a hospital, doctors discerned that Willie had previously passed over the line of clinical death. Even eight hours after the lightning strike, his pulse was only in the high 20s.
“LIFE’S NOT FAIR”
With a strong underpinning of faith, Morse family members have continually observed touches of grace throughout their lives. Regarding the lightning strike, they realize that the one who had been hit first was the only one who could have survived that impact—Willie, the athlete who had just finished his freshman year of college basketball and who was in fabulous condition.
And as for his basketball career, Willie had played at St. Bonaventure his first year and done well, earning an average of 10 minutes per game in playing time. But faced with some challenges inside that program, the State High grad had transferred to Colgate University and thus was ineligible to play for Colgate during the 2005-06 season. The Morses saw it as divine timing because that season was the very year that Willie needed to recuperate from his near-death experience.
In addition to their faith-driven perspective, the Morses also believe that life is not fair—and that’s become a family slogan. It started with Mike’s dad, William Morse, who responded to one of his young son’s complaints by saying, “You’re going to run into a lot of situations that aren’t fair, but don’t let that get you down. Life isn’t fair. Look what people did to Jesus.”
A generation later, Mike would guide Willie through a bedtime routine that included prayers, a challenge to name the capital of a foreign nation and the Morse code that says, “Life’s not fair.” Says Willie, “I had to repeat that back to him every night. There was never a night when that didn’t happen.”
As it turned out, the slogan would become meaningful to both father and son. Of course, both were struck by a lightning bolt, and that might not have seemed very fair. In addition, Mike could have surely complained or even given up on life when he dealt with two bouts of cancer. Or after he suffered three accidents that each resulted in a skull fracture. But that’s not the Morse way. “When I wake up in the morning,” says Mike, “I just thank God for another day.”
ALWAYS BASKETBALL
So, is Willie still enamored with the game of basketball? Silly question. Even after he finished his college career as captain of Colgate’s 2008-09 team, the younger Morse found ways to stay connected to his lifelong passion.
Soon after his return to State College, he began training future players, a hobby he maintains to this day. And of course, he supports the Penn State team, the very team his dad helped to coach from 1986 to 1989.
Even the experience of meeting his future wife, Jenna, related to his favorite sport. A friend had insisted on creating a Bumble profile to help Willie find a spouse, and that profile said a lot about basketball. So did Jenna’s profile because she had competed in three PIAA Final Fours for Lewistown High School and then she played college ball at Millersville.
On their first date, Willie asked if she was a Duke fan or a North Carolina fan. Jenna gave the “wrong” answer, but it didn’t matter since he was already smitten. Today, the couple has two children, Maddie and Beau.
Of course, Sunday’s Hall of Fame celebration will be a big basketball-based blessing for Willie. Old hoops acquaintances and former teammates will be present as will Willie’s employers at Nittany Brokerage, Dean and Susie Johnson.
Last but certainly not least, Mike and Karen Morse will attend, and Willie doesn’t take that lightly—especially due to his dad’s past scrapes with death. “It is a tremendous honor,” he says of his entry into the Hall, “and it’s really cool for me to have Dad there. For him to see my vision as a young kid and help facilitate that and to have this happen in his lifetime where he can see it…it’s neat to have that be part of our journey together.”
