The Stormy Petrel is a mascot made infamous by how recognizably bizarre it is, but the school it represents is home to a burgeoning men’s lacrosse program in Brookhaven, Georgia.
The Oglethorpe University men’s lacrosse team won their first game under new head coach Kyle Morris last Friday by beating Brevard College 10-3. It was also Morris’ first-ever win as a college head coach.
A former midfielder at Division II Shorter University, Morris came to the sport much later than most collegiate players and had a bizarre positional switch as well.
“I grew up in Orlando,” Morris said. “There wasn’t a ton of lacrosse around, and I played baseball growing up, but then I got the opportunity to switch to lacrosse. I didn’t start playing until my freshman year in high school where I was a goalie for four years. For some reason. I decided to try midfield in the summertime and I was recruited to Shorter.”
After playing at Shorter under Jason Childs — now the head coach at D-III Saint Mary’s — Morris embarked upon the traditional path laid out for young lacrosse coaches. First, he became an assistant coach at Signal Mountain High School in 2015 and then the Baylor school in 2016. Both school are located in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In 2017, Morris moved to the college ranks as an assistant men’s coach at Oglethorpe — where he also served as a women’s assistant — before getting a chance to join Brandon Childs at York College, a perennial top 20 program, in 2020. But the season was cut short due to COVID-19, and Morris found himself in a holding pattern. When Oglethorpe’s head coach left to pursue other opportunities, Morris was torn between staying at York to learn from Childs and pursuing the opportunity to coach at Oglethorpe again, this time as its head coach.
After going through the interview process, Morris went down to Orlando to visit his family and have a normal day at the beach. Then he received the text we all have learned to live in fear of: “Hey, can you jump on a Zoom call?”
“It was probably two weeks after my dad had passed away,” Morris said. “So, I texted Brandon [Childs]. I texted Jason [Childs]. I told [my girlfriend] Brittany, and I told my mom and left the beach, went back to the car to hop on the call with the Athletic Director, and he offered me the job. I thought, ‘You don’t need to think about it. Take this job.’ I said, ‘I'm going to go ahead and take this job if you’ll have me.’ And at that moment, I felt like my dad was sitting in the car with me.”
As one of the few Black head coaches in college lacrosse, Morris sees a way forward to bring more Black players into the game, and it’s the opposite of what you may think.
“I think representation matters,” said Morris. “There’s a [constant] conversation between coaches, and it often goes to the fact that there’s not enough Black players. It’s this vicious cycle of [people saying] there’s not enough Black players, so there aren’t enough black coaches. And I really think it’s the opposite. There aren’t enough black coaches. When you look at the guy who’s coaching you and he doesn’t look like you, there’s a different trust level. There’s a different belief factor.”
The majority of coaches learn and adapt their philosophies and systems from other programs. Morris’ influence has a surprisingly upstate flavor.
“I am a big fan of Hobart,” Morris said. “I think the way they play the game with the [number] of assisted goals that they get is the way I like to play the game. And in order to do that, you’ve got to have a ton of really high IQ kids who are willing to give the ball up. So, unselfish lacrosse is really what I’m about. I think teams that rely on one guy get themselves into trouble because you can game plan to slow down that one guy. In five years if you asked me, ‘Are we playing the game like Hobart?’ I’d like to be able to say, ‘Yes.’”
Oglethorpe is a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) school that plays in the Southern Athletic Association, which is home to teams like Rhodes, Berry and Sewanee. Located in an area about 20 minutes from downtown Atlanta, Oglethorpe isn’t quite urban or suburban. The skyline of Atlanta is still visible at an overlook minutes from campus.
The school has won just one conference game, in 2016 against Millsaps College, during its brief history, but Morris believes the program is closer to matching or eclipsing that goal sooner rather than later.
“I think we’re really close, to be honest with you,” Morris said. “You know the guys that we have right now, and I’ll give Zach Taylor credit; he brought in guys that had high ceilings. The fact of the matter is that we have to do a better job coaching these guys up. We’ve got a ton of guys who are athletic. We’ve got a ton of guys who are willing to learn, and we’ve got to put them in a better position to succeed.”