Hall Track Officially Named "Rollie Morris Track"
April 19, 2008 Dedication
By Kevin Hieronymus - BCR
April 20, 2008
Remembering Rollie
Hall High School to dedicate track in memory of longtime coach
By Kevin Hieronymus
khieronymus@bcrnews.com
Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:02 AM CDT
SPRING VALLEY — The name of the meet already bears his name. Now the track will, too.
During Saturday’s Rollie Morris Invitational, Hall High School will dedicate its track in memory of the legendary coach Morris, who passed away in November of 2006. From now on, the track will be forever known as the Rollie Morris Memorial Track.
Two pictures of Morris in different stages of a career, spanning from 1962-93, when he ran the Hall program, will greet visitors for Saturday’s meet at the track entrance.
The meet is scheduled to start at 10 a.m.
Mike Morris, who along with is brother, Todd, ran on his father’s teams, is certain his dad would be very proud and honored to have the track named after him.
“There is no doubt that my dad would be tickled pink,” said Morris, a 1984 Hall graduate, who will be unable to attend today’s meet which was rescheduled from last week due to family commitments. “Both my dad and I have watched some great athletes through the years and some great champions like D.J. Glynn from Hall and Garrett Barnas from Bureau Valley.
“To come back and see the track named after him is amazing. I really have to thank Gary Vicini for this. He really spearheaded this event. He and my dad were very good friends.”
Vicini, the Hall athletic director and girls’ track coach, said the honor is all Rollie Morris’ doing.
“No doubt, he kept that program alive for a long time. And he started up cross country, too, because he saw the benefits of cross country carry-over to his distance runners in track,” Vicini said. “He’s a guy a lot like Mike Skoflanc at St. Bede, who coached it all and did it without a track. He coached the shot putters as hard as he coached the relay teams. He had good high jumpers; he coached it all. In this day and age where everybody wants assistants, he didn’t really have any until later. And he coached the girls at one point, too.
“He pretty much did it all and kept our program alive. And it’s flourishing today and he deserves all the credit.”
Former athletic director Frank Colmone said Morris was a good coach, made the most of what he had to work with and got the best out of his athletes.
“He was very personable, knew how to get to the kids. He had a way of talking to them, a way of working with them,” Colmone said. “He took some kids who probably wouldn’t run cross country or track otherwise, but got them out. He had some pretty good kids and might have even saved a few if it wasn’t for track or cross country.”
Mike says it was always much more than just running track for the Hall athletes. His dad made sure it was fun.
“You could tell the kids had fun, because we used to have 75-80 kids out for track,” Morris said. “More than seeing kids excel at track, my dad truly enjoyed seeing the kids graduate. That really made him proud. Some of those kids even come back and coached like Nick Hank. My dad really enjoyed his time there.”
Like many other students coached by their parents, Mike says he had his days, also, where it wasn’t as enjoyable as other days.
“Oh, of course he was a little tougher on me and my brother,” Mike said laughing. “We lived just across from Hall High School and there were times when we got back from meets where I jumped off the bus and sprinted across the street and straight to my house, but I wouldn’t change any of it.”
Morris was a three-time qualifier in shot put, placing seventh his senior year. He says he’s not sure who was more excited, him or his dad.
Hall used to run track meets on the grass of the football field until Morris and Colmone instituted the Red Devil Relays on the new cinder track at Hall in 1976. The meet was moved to IVCC in the early ‘80s, until the track fees ran too high, Colmone said.
The meet was discontinued until the current all-weather track was built at Hall in 1997 behind the efforts of Lou and Lori Guerrini and the Back the Track Committee,
The next year, Hall ran the Rollie Morris Invite for the first time.
