Former Clarkson Coach Morris Deserves Second Chance

The last time the Harvard men’s hockey team made the fabled trek to the twin hamlets of Canton and Potsdam, N.Y., it was greeted with bitterly cold weather and tall newspaper headlines.

It was the ultimate dust-up, a drama with more twists, turns, and subplots than the diary of a swooning 13-year-old. The North Country—the quirky community so close to the St. Lawrence River that most people on the radio parlent le français—buzzed with the kind of everyone-knows-everyone gossip only small towns can produce. Not surprisingly, college hockey was the subject.

After all, the Clarkson Golden Knights and St. Lawrence Saints, who play on campuses standing only a 20-minute drive apart, shepherd their respective communities through subzero winters and drive the local economy. And for a decade and a half, Mark Morris was the czar of Clarkson’s hockey empire.

That was, until Nov. 15, 2002, when he was fired after 15 seasons, 306 wins, nine NCAA tournament appearances—and one afternoon game in which he responded, either justifiably or inappropriately (depending on your take), to physical aggression from Zach Schwan, one of his players.

The incident was reported to the university, and, with the relationship between Morris and Clarkson administrators in a state of disrepair, he found little support there. Following a 10-day investigation, Morris was fired, shortly before that night’s Harvard-St. Lawrence and Brown-Clarkson games.

“He was taken advantage of,” said Michigan State head coach Rick Comley, who at one point had agreed to testify on Morris’ behalf. “It was totally unnecessary, unneeded and unfair.”

Harvard is back in the North Country this weekend. Morris is not. He finished last season in the Vancouver Canucks organization, hoping that would lead to a fresh start in college hockey. It didn’t. He applied for coaching jobs in the ECAC over the summer—some of which he probably could’ve walked into a year ago—but got barely a nibble.

Apparently, athletic directors saw him as damaged goods, no matter how good his credentials are otherwise. So, the only thing Morris can do now is wait…and work…and hope. “I just hope that time eliminates whatever perceptions there are out there,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

Morris was able to put the incident behind him—in a legal sense, at least—when he settled his lawsuit with Clarkson in August, but began this season without a coaching job. About two months ago, however, he became an interim assistant with the Saginaw (Mich.) Spirit of the Ontario Hockey League—“interim” being the operative word.

Morris, after all, grew up in the North Country, his family still lives there, and his wife is an attorney there. His parents live there. His wife’s parents live there. Morris built his entire life there. Unfortunately, lives are hard to move when the word “interim” is involved.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, to go through what my family has gone through,” he said.

Morris has four children, all of whom play hockey. He doesn’t get to watch them. Nor does he get to see his wife every day. Instead, he’s several hundred miles from home, coaching a young, struggling hockey team in an unfamiliar town.

Everything—everything—feels so temporary. “Right now, my life is on hold,” Morris said. “It has been for quite awhile now.”

You wonder how long it will take an athletic director to see Morris’ record for what it is and help pull him off college hockey’s equivalent of Alcatraz.

Again, consider his record. His win totals and NCAA appearances are impressive enough on their own, but they become even more so when you consider what Morris was up against. Think back to when you were 18. If you were being recruited by schools in Boston, Minneapolis, Colorado Springs and Potsdam, which town would be No. 4 on your list?

In other words, Morris either sold the school to blue-chip recruits, or took the best players he could find and molded them into elite hockey teams. It’s hard to say which would be more impressive.

“I’ll let my record speak for itself,” Morris said. “I’m still the same guy I was for the last 20 years.”

And that is the most frustrating thing about his predicament. Objectively speaking, he is an outstanding hockey coach, and he wants nothing more than to get back into college hockey.

But Division I openings are scarce, and there is essentially the same qualified crop of candidates considered each time. You almost have to be the perfect candidate for the perfect school just to get an interview. The process gets that much more difficult if the events of an afternoon scrimmage are dragging you down like a giant-sized parachute around your waist.

“He’s staying in hockey, trying to get doors open for himself,” Comley said, “but the doors that are most important to him—those in college hockey—are closed right now.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. Someone, somewhere needs to give this man a break. Did he make mistakes at Clarkson? Sure. He admitted that he is “far from perfect.” He didn’t have many friends in the administration and may have lost touch with his players a bit during his last years there.

But in talking with Morris, you get a genuine sense that he has truly learned something from his ordeal. He is a better man for it and, thanks to his time in Vancouver and Saginaw, a better hockey coach, as well.

“Things happen for a reason,” he said. “It’s a healthy thing for me to turn the page, and move onto something new, but letting go of something near and dear to you is awfully tough to do.”

Morris is, in his heart, a college hockey coach, and you get the sense that he ultimately won’t come to terms with his dismissal until he’s coaching another Division I team. In all fairness, he should get that opportunity. “He deserves a second chance,” said Saginaw head coach Moe Mantha.

A look around college athletics shows several prominent cases of redemption-gone-right. In November 2002—the weekend after Morris was fired, in fact—first-year Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves had a physical confrontation at a hotel with one of his players, Alex Leavitt. The incident was reported to the athletic director. A letter of reprimand was put in Eaves’s personnel file, one of several low points for the Badgers in a 13-23-4 season.

But the administration stuck behind Eaves—and is undoubtedly satisfied with his performance since. Wisconsin is 17-9-6 this season and is a good bet to make the NCAA tournament, while Eaves won a Gold Medal last month as head coach of Team USA at the World Junior Championships.

You also might remember Bobby Knight, the Neil Reed tape and alleged Kent Harvey arm-grab/cuss-out incident. Indiana had enough of him, but he’s found a new niche at Texas Tech and has made the Red Raiders a Top 25 program.

And how about George O’Leary, he of the deceptive resume and Notre Dame embarrassment? He’s a head football coach again, at Central Florida.

And Mike Price, whose Alabama coaching career ended before it began because of a well-publicized night at a topless bar in Florida? He’s the head man at Texas-El Paso.

Now, there will be no attempt here to rank order Morris, Eaves, Knight, O’Leary and Price in a coaching sin bin. But it is fair to say that what Morris did certainly doesn’t put him on a moral low-ground when compared with the other four, and they are all coaching Division I teams again.

One day, he hopes not too long from now, Morris expects to do the same. Tonight, though, he will be in Sarnia, Ontario, standing alongside Mantha—and not running his own bench at the Clarkson-Harvard game.

For most at the Sarnia Sports and Entertainment Centre, it will be just another hockey game.

For Morris, it will be one more step toward stability for himself, his family and his career.

At least he hopes so.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.