Saints Peter & Paul High School senior Cory Morgan refused to let the recruiting process drag on. One school’s lacrosse program stood out for him—High Point University in North Carolina. Morgan, a three-sport athlete, committed to go to High Point in January just two months after visiting its campus.
He will be attending the school on a lacrosse scholarship. “I did things different than a lot of other people,” says Morgan, who carries a 3.4 grade-point average and plans to major in marketing.
“When High Point told me, they were looking at me pretty hard, I was like, ‘Sweet. This is where I have wanted to go for a pretty long time.’ So, I just focused on them.”
Furman University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Florida Southern College also recruited him, but he couldn’t stop thinking about High Point and its appeal.
“When I visited the campus, I just fell in love with it,” he says. “I like how the lacrosse team plays. Their style of play is a lot like how I always play. And it’s like a family, there. The lacrosse program is super close.”
High Point Men’s Lacrosse Coach Jon Torpey was also a selling point for the 6-foot-1, 190-pound Morgan, who transferred to Saints Peter & Paul after his freshman year at Easton High. “The coach is a very good and he has done a great job with the lacrosse program,” he says. “I want to be part of that.”
Saints Peter & Paul Coach Pat Tracy believes High Point is close to the perfect school for Morgan. “He was a swiss Army knife kind of guy for us,” he says. “They see him at the college level as a guy who can do a lot of things for them at the midfield. He will be able play solid defense and then create transition.”
Morgan, a midfielder, has played club lacrosse for nine years and the skills he developed during that time set him up to have a lot of success as underclassman. He scored 17 goals and had 12 assists for Easton as a freshman and earned Bayside Conference honorable mention honors.
He improved on those numbers drastically as a sophomore at Saints Peter & Paul, totaling 44 goals and 21 assists. Morgan scored five goals in March of last year in a loss to Friends during a season in which he was named a Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference First-Team selection.
He notched four goals against highly respected St. Paul’s of the A Conference in March, during a season reduced to four games because of the pandemic.
“He has great speed and good size,” Tracy says. “He can shoot the ball well on the run. But the thing that really impresses me about Cory in the two years that I have worked with him is that his motor has gotten tremendously better.”
Tracey also values Morgan’s leadership qualities. He served as co-captain of both the soccer and lacrosse teams. “That’s an area I have seen tremendous growth in the past two years,” the coach says. “He is not going to yell or scream. But he will lead by example. I have challenged him and he has done a really good job of leading by example on and off the field.”
Morgan is also a standout in soccer. He’s a two-year starter as goalie for the Sabres. “He is one of the top goalies in the state,” Saints Peter & Paul Boys Soccer Coach G.R. Cannon says. “He could play Division I soccer. He has the ability and mindset to do it.”
Morgan played on the Saints Peter & Paul varsity basketball team last winter and exceeded the expectations of Coach Gary Gould. He averaged eight points and four rebounds per game. Not a bad season for someone playing the sport for the first time. “He was a vital part of the team,” Gould says. “He understood how hard you had to play to win. He is a great athlete who played physical and has good size and strength.”
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