Hal Morrison has written his name indelibly into the athletic records of East Tennessee State University both as a player and a coach in a career which spanned over three decades. A native of Sullivan County, Morrison was a four-sports letterman in high school, probably the greatest athlete in the history of ETSU, and a nationally known golf coach. He earned Coach of the Year ten times in fourteen years, with two of his Buccaneers teams in the top ten of the NCAA Championships. His golfers dominated the Southern Conference from the time they joined the league in 1978, winning five consecutive championships. Morrison, who is an area consultant in the educational program of the National Golf Foundation, experienced only one losing season in over a quarter of a century as head coach of the Buccaneers golf squad. As a football player, he was ETSU’s first to earn Little All-American honors. Among his records at ETSU, Morrison caught thirteen passes in one game, and he scored the most points in a single season (eighty-seven). He was an outstanding performer in basketball and baseball, as well, and was pursued by professional baseball scouts. Luckily for ETSU, Morrison chose to coach after he graduated in 1954, rather than head to the minor leagues. And the rest, as they say, is history.
