Morris Earns Top Ivy Football Honor

As if winning the Ivy League championship, beating Yale and posting its first perfect season since 1913 wasn’t enough, the Harvard football team has another feather in its cap—or helmet, if you will.

Junior wide receiver Carl Morris was awarded the Bushnell Trophy as the league’s player of the year, while eight other Crimson players were selected as All-Ivy First-Teamers yesterday.

“It’s a great honor,” Morris said. “It was just great to see everybody on the team getting recognition, as well.”

The award caps a breakout season for Morris. He finished the year with 71 receptions—a new school record—for 943 yards and 12 touchdowns. He already owned the school records for career receptions with 155, receiving yardage with 2,200 and touchdown catches with 20.

“Carl Morris is the best receiver in the league,” quarterback Neil Rose told The Crimson earlier this year. “Simply no one can stop him. He’s smart, he’s strong and he’s fast. I’m lucky to have him.”

Morris is Harvard’s first Bushnell winner since Jim Stoeckel in 1973.

“I would have thought [Morris] would have been robbed if he hadn’t won it,” senior offensive lineman Justin Stark said. “I’m glad he’s on our team. I’d hate to have to go up against him.

“No one has been more important to our team’s success than Carl,” he added.

Morris was one of eight Harvard players to make the First Team. In all, 14 Crimson players were recognized.

Rose, senior defensive lineman Marc Laborsky, senior offensive lineman Jason Hove, sophomore linebacker Dante Balestracci, senior defensive back Willie Alford , senior defensive back Andy Fried, and Stark were all selected as the best in the league at their respective positions. Morris, Hove, Rose, Laborsk, Balestracci and Alford were all unanimous selections.

Six more Harvard players were honored. Senior linemen Danny Kistler andKyle Sims, along with senior linebacker Eric LaHaie were Second-Team selections. Senior linemen Steve Collins and Ryan FitzGerald and sophomore punter Adam Kingston were honorable mentions.

The only team to come even close to Harvard’s success was Penn, who also had eight First-Team selections.

Dartmouth came in third with four players, while Princeton and Brown had three each.

Among the honorees were some of Harvard’s top playmakers this year—whose feats included Fried’s last-minute goal-line interception to seal The Game against Yale, Balestracci’s trick-play lateral to Kingston earlier that same day, and Morris’s two touchdown receptions that sparked a comeback against Penn to clinch the league championship.

“I would saw the way the team reacted in the Penn game was the highlight of the season,” Morris said. “It was easily the biggest game we’ve been a part of. Penn is a championship-caliber team, and the way we reacted against them was the biggest thing we did this year.”

The news gets even better for Harvard. Rose, who spent 1999 on the bench with a foot injury, intends to use his extra year of eligibility and stay on as quarterback for the 2002 season. The mighty Rose-Morris connection will be reunited for one more year.

“We’ve got a lot to look forward to,” Morris said. “Everybody will be trying to take us down, so it’ll be a great challenge. But we’re just the team to take it on.”

It will be tough for Rose to repeat his success from this season. Rose registered a 64.1 completion percentage, throwing for 15 touchdowns and just five inteceptions over eight games.

Even more impressively, Rose posted those numbers despite being pulled from the Princeton game and missing the Dartmouth game with an injured shoulder.

The team remains proud of its unbeaten season.

“Obviously, you’re excited and its a great compliment, but more than anything it’s just an honor to be part of this team,” Stark said. “[Honors like] All-Ivy are forgotten, but we’ll always go down as those guys who were on the undefeated team in 2001.”