LATROBE, PA – The daughter of a long-time high school basketball referee, Maria Morgan, C’19, G’20, figured out how to dribble not long after she learned how to walk. She was a three-time all-state selection in high school and a three-year starter on the women’s basketball team at Saint Vincent College.
Morgan could make the game look easy, a byproduct of natural ability honed by long hours of practice. Often, the most difficult part was simply finding something to put on her feet.
“I could never find a cool woman's basketball shoe to wear,” Morgan said. “I always had to buy the kids’ sizes—and they were usually boys’—because the [shoe companies] didn't make a lot of girls’ basketball shoes.”
The scarcity of drippy hoops shoes might have cramped Morgan’s style, but it didn’t slow her on the court. At Bucktail High School, she averaged 26.7 points per game and set the Clinton County scoring record with 2,407 career points. At Saint Vincent, she finished with 848 career points, twice led the team in 3-point field goals and helped the Bearcats capture their first Presidents’ Athletic Conference crown in her senior season.
Before the 20221-22 season, Morgan joined Saint Vincent head coach Jimmy Petruska’s staff as a volunteer assistant coach.
This past November, Morgan was inducted into the West Branch Valley Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. The 11-person induction class included NFL official Alan Eck, minor league baseball executive Gabe Sinicropi and NCAA Division I All-American wrestler Biff Walizer.
Having all three of her high school coaches from basketball, tennis and softball turn up at the induction ceremony caught Morgan by surprise. “I hadn't seen them all in the same room in a probably 10 years, so that was nice,” she said.
Although she played three sports in high school, basketball always was her favorite. She began playing at age 5 in a rec league and got pointers from older brother, A.J., who also was a three-sport athlete.
“Tennis and softball were super fun,” Morgan said. “I had great teammates and was on some great some great teams, made some good runs. But basketball is what led me to Saint Vincent.”
As a student at Saint Vincent, Morgan earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in criminology. She now works as the College’s assistant director of alumni relations and is an assistant coach for the women’s basketball team.
Morgan noted that players she coaches have plenty of shoe options from which to choose—just one sign of the gains made by women’s sports in recent years.
“There are so many more opportunities and larger crowds at women's sports games, especially at the collegiate level and the WNBA,” Moran said. “That stuff is so cool because you can see how far we’ve come.”
Maria Morgan (center) is a volunteer assistant coach for the Saint Vincent College women’s basketball team
