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Mount Pleasant • The day he interviewed for the job, Geno Morgan walked into the old State Street gym — cluttered and in obvious need of a makeover — envisioning how his court would one day look. Not just the court — everything. The stands, the rafters, the baskets. The windows allowing in just the perfect amount of natural light during the day. The Tiger eyes plastered onto the bleachers.
The ideas kept coming. On their way back home to Atlanta, he told his wife, Lisa, how the team needed a new locker room of its own. She cries and laughs telling this story, because as she told him that day six years ago, "Baby, you don't even have the job yet."
She told this story at his memorial held in the same gym, on the same court they'd once stared out on during his job interview. She told this story five weeks after Morgan died suddenly in his sleep in July at age 49. A rounded table with a black tablecloth was littered with tissues and notes of her speech. A bright bouquet of flowers burning with orange daisies — Tiger colors — was perched in front on Morgan's finished floor.
To her left was her husband's name, in large, black, capital letters, on the court he yearned to design before even becoming the Wasatch Academy boys' basketball coach. Morgan's name is in another spot on the court, too. Directly in front of the Tiger bench. It's the first thing you see when you walk through the second set of double-doors in the State Street gym. A reminder of the three state championships Wasatch Academy won, and the national attention it earned, during Morgan's too-short tenure.
"You see his name on the ground every day," said senior guard Koby McEwen. "It's hard, but we, as a team, we're getting through it, I think. It was better than a month ago."
The gym's not done yet, but the locker room, down a dimly lit stairwell behind the bench, is getting there.
The selling point
The defining moments of Morgan's life happened inside the gymnasiums he frequented. In his hometown of Chicago, his first job came after being handed the keys to his neighborhood gym. He was tasked with opening it up and preparing the floor for the games to be played that day. He was 8.
In 1994, on a gym floor in Alaska, he first locked eyes with the woman he'd marry while the two attended a volunteer service project.
And basketball was the conduit for Morgan's affinity with teaching. Ball under his arm. Whistle dangling around his neck. Where there was a gym, there was Geno.
Whenever given the opportunity, Mario Chalmers took the five-minute car ride up the street to the local recreation center in Anchorage, where he'd find Morgan, playing or coaching, or both.
"Anytime I was at the gym, he was somebody that I could look up to," said Chalmers, now a point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies. "He always tried to mentor me. … He would tell me to not let anybody tell me I can't do things."
Before Morgan turned 30, he led Palmer High School to an Alaska state title.
Five years later, he coached East Anchorage to a title of its own. Basketball took him to more schools and more jobs. He coached at the University of Alaska-Anchorage before eventually moving to Emory University in Atlanta.
One day in 2009, Morgan answered a phone call. On the other line was Ty Kennedy, calling from Wasatch Academy, a private boarding school of roughly 350 students in a town with less than 4,000 people.
Kennedy, now the dean of students at the school, asked Morgan if there was any interest.
"The toughest thing was convincing Geno to take over a 3-18 team," he said.
Winning Geno's way
After Morgan took the job, he was dining at Cavalier Pizza on the south end of Mount Pleasant's main drag. An employee walked up to him and said bluntly, "Oh, I hope you're going to bring some wins here, because we've been getting beat up for a while." That was one of Lisa's favorite stories. By then, the two had become a package deal at Wasatch Academy, with Lisa eventually becoming the school's dean of students.
It took Morgan just two seasons before he made a champion out of the Tigers. Following the 1A title in 2010, the Tigers won two more state titles, this time in 2A, in 2012 and 2013. Their dominance led to unrest in the 2A ranks, where teams were regularly steamrolled by Wasatch Academy. The program eventually went independent in 2014 to play a more competitive schedule.
Morgan's persona, coaching methods and basketball connections helped him find players from all over the world. And he meshed those talents into champions. The 2013 team featured players from Chile, Mali, France, Canada and Mount Pleasant, too.
"He brought me here [and] he made my life that much better," said Josip Vrankic, a 6-foot-7 junior forward from Toronto. "He taught me, 'All we need is five players and a ball.' "
Said McEwen, who also came from Toronto: "He was set on a vision. He was determined to get there and he knew what he had here. He had to start from the ground up."
The goal? To win, win big and win Morgan's way. If he saw a player with his hat on in school, Morgan would deliver a look that told him to ditch it. As McEwen said, to play for Morgan, players must follow the rules, avoid trouble, respect everyone — and win.
In Morgan's six years at the helm, Wasatch Academy went 128-20.
'God called him home'
McEwen knows he ran into Morgan, but can't quite recall the last interaction with his coach, at the school's graduation in late May. The fogginess eats at the talented combo guard who recently committed to Utah State.
"I'm pretty sure we gave each other a hug and said, 'See you during the summer,' " he said.
A little over a month later, he woke up on July 2 to see his phone flooded with messages. Morgan had passed away in his sleep. There was a picture they wanted to paint this year, McEwen said, replete with strokes from wins at high-profile tournaments across the country. But it had all suddenly changed forever.
Morgan had been in a serious car accident in the summer of 2014, rear-ended by a semi-trailer. It required follow-up surgeries over the course of the next year. He developed persistent migraine headaches. Geno, Lisa explained, was really good at not letting others see what he was dealing with physically.
This past June, in their 20th year of marriage, they renewed their wedding vows in front of family and friends in Chicago. Weeks later, he fell asleep at his mother's house on a Wednesday night and didn't wake up on a Thursday morning.
"God called him home," Lisa said.
Kennedy was one of the pallbearers at his friend's funeral. He still has the white gloves. Despite the shock felt by the school and program, basketball season was four months away. The Tigers needed a head coach.
A new face
A local approaches Curtis Condie outside the State Street gym and extends his hand. He introduces himself as a fan. He lives across the street. Like the rest of Mount Pleasant, he's relieved the season is finally here. It's been a long five months.
That happens a lot, Condie said. People know him now. That's part of the territory of being the Tigers' basketball coach, in large part due to Morgan's demonstrative nature. Now Condie is tasked with leading the way as the program picks up the pieces.
Condie was hired three weeks after Morgan's death. The former Utah Valley assistant played at Utah State and has also had stints at Louisiana Tech, Northern Arizona and Snow College.
What he's inherited is considered one of the premier prep rosters in the state, as Wasatch Academy prepares for its second year as an independent. The Tigers have six returners from last year, headlined by McEwen and Vrankic, as well as Jackson Rowe and Shameil Stevenson. Morgan's nephew, Bryson Langdon, is a junior point guard who returns from Chicago.
Kennedy said a seasoned coach like Condie was necessary to be able to handle such a delicate transition. The jolt of losing Morgan hasn't waned, and it may never. He knows that Morgan wouldn't want anyone to fret, especially with basketball season back.
"I love being here," Condie said, "but I'm sorry I'm here."
An empty chair
Behind the glass is the man with the massive smile. The one people talk about, the one they cannot forget. Accompanying his photo in the trophy case are his three state trophies, each draped by the net he and his players trimmed from the rim.
Before their season opener, a 94-59 win over North Sevier last week, the Tigers are casually hoisting up shots, sporting their beaming orange warm-ups. A ball ricochets off a player under the basket and rolls toward the Wasatch Academy bench.
It rolls over Morgan's name. All of this was his fantasy. It's just that it's opening night and he's not here. McEwen reaches down, picks the ball up and fires away. This time, he drains the shot.
The Tigers are summoned to the staircase just behind their bench. Players file down into a locker room, far from finished. The 11 players occupy two rows of chairs. Some nervously bounce their feet off the bare concrete floor. To their left, six exposed wooden beams and pieces of drywall that lead to what will eventually be the showers. To their right, dangling power outlets.
Like the locker room beneath their sparkling new gym, these Tigers are also in the renovation process. Not by choice. Not because of losses on the court. Four months and 23 days after Geno Morgan left so unexpectedly, the Wasatch Academy program took another crucial step in the grieving process.
Basketball, somehow, has arrived. Someday soon, the State Street gym and the locker room will be finished. The stands will be full and the gym will be filled with familiar cheers. But it will never be complete. The man with the smile is gone. The players step out onto his court without him. The first chair on the bench is empty.
"If I'm here 20 years, that 20th year, there will still be a chair open," Condie said.
And so it will remain for the Tigers. Wherever they play, they will save some room for Geno.
Twitter: @chriskamrani —
Geno Morgan: A basketball life
Tiger timeline • Wasatch Academy boys' basketball coach: 2009 to 2015
Accolades • In six years as head coach, Morgan had a 128-20 record, including three state championships from 2010 to 2013. Morgan was named Utah's top high school basketball coach by the Best of State organization six straight years.
Early days • Was an NAIA All-American guard at Alaska Pacific University, won state titles in Alaska as a coach at Palmer High and East Anchorage, also coached at University of Alaska-Anchorage and Emory University in Atlanta.
Big games in Geno's gym • The Tigers will host Lone Peak on Dec. 10, West on Feb. 5, Summit Academy on Feb. 8, Weber on Feb. 13 and Jordan on Feb. 16.