City of Basketball Love

By Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of CoBL’s “Prepping for Preps” series, which will take a look at many of the top high school programs in the region as part of our 2023-24 season preview coverage. The complete list of schools previewed thus far can be found here.)

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Ron Morris had to pull back a few times to catch himself. Just the thought caused a poignant crack in the voice of the Bensalem boys’ basketball coach. He remembers first putting a basketball in his sons Antonio and Noah’s hands as soon as they could walk. 

Antonio, 18, and Noah, 17, grew up ingrained in Bensalem basketball. Ron has been associated with the program for 19 years, and about to enter his fifth season as the Owls’ head coach. When they were five and six, respectively, Noah and Antonio would pretend they were Bensalem players coming through the high-five line in the family basement den, while Ron announced the player’s names.

At Bensalem this season, every night will be Senior Night for the Morris family.

Bensalem coach Ron Morris, center, and his sons Antonio, left, and Noah, will spend one last season together in 2023-23. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Antonio and Noah are both seniors, separated by 11 months. This will be the last year that they’ll play for dad.

It is only October and Ron is bracing himself.

Who could blame him? He is a father first, a coach second.

“I’m a passionate, emotional person, so this will be a rollercoaster for me all year,” Ron admitted, fighting back the emotional cords tugging on him. “They’re my boys. I waited for these special moments since they were little. Antonio and Noah played all sports growing up, and the sacrifice of a coach is you miss stuff. Now this season is finally here. I get to share it with them for the last time. The boys chose basketball on their own. Being around them this amount of time, through basketball, it’s going to be a fun year.

“I look at every year the same, where every game is important. I push that basketball is a tool to prepare you for life. That won’t change. But with Antonio and Noah, as a parent, this is the last ride. Seeing all the work my players put in and how that comes to fruition is awesome to watch. From a dad perspective, it makes me very proud to see how much time my sons put in. Senior Night will be difficult. My sons aren’t as emotional as me, but I think that will come out Senior Night. When it’s the end, it hits hard.”

The Owls finished 12-10 overall last season and out of the PIAA District 1 Class 6A playoffs. In a short time, Ron, a 1997 Bensalem grad, has done wonders with the Bensalem program, leading the Owls to the District 1 Class 6A semifinals in 2019-20 after winning the Suburban One League National Conference title for the first time outright since the 1990-91 season.

This season will be as trying emotionally as it will be on the court. To put it bluntly: The Owls could be the smallest team in District 1 Class 6A.

Two-year starters Antonio, a 5-11 senior guard getting attention from Wilkes, Arcadia, and DeSales University, and burly 6-2, 270-pound junior Jaidyn Moffitt, a potential Division I football player, return with 6-1 senior forward Micah White. The other starters will come from Noah, a 5-8 senior guard, 5-8 junior guard Amir Drummond, 6-1 senior guard Nate Cooper, 5-9 senior guard Angelo Semon, 5-10 junior guard Christian Lee and 6-2 senior forward Idris Savadogo.

“We are small, and it forces us to play with a chip on our shoulders,” said Ron, who returned to coaching after suffering a stroke on August 24, 2020. “We know that we’re going to have to work extremely hard and make opposing teams work for every bucket they get. We have to play defense collectively to succeed. We’ll rely on good guard play to keep us in games. We lost a lot of tight games last year. They remember the way our season finished. It motivates us. We were No. 25 in the district and only 24 make it. The ultimate goal is to get back to the state playoffs.”

Antonio, who carries a 3.8 GPA, admits how frustrating last year was. He felt the team underachieved.

“This year, we need to be more together on the court. If someone messes up, we have to be there for each other and let it go,” he said. “Every game mattered, and we did not look at it that way. We were up 15 points in the third quarter against North Penn in the third quarter, and a few mistakes happened, and a domino effect took over. I need to take more of a leadership role this year. We are very small, but we play bigger than who we are. We will play to the end.”

Moffitt will be counted on to do the nasty inside work. He possesses good footwork for someone his size and has a nice outside shooting touch. 

“I need to show more leadership,” said Moffitt, a starting defensive lineman for the Owls’ football team. “We should have done better last year. I learned we must keep playing hard, no matter what happens and play better team defense.”

Noah would like to wrap a family bow on the season with the goals of winning the league title the last time playing under his father, and then make the state playoffs.

“We learned we can not take any plays off, and we did not play good enough defense. It’s an area we need to focus better on in the clutch moments of games,” said Noah, who holds a 4.0 GPA and may attend Bucks County Community College to continue playing. “The size difference will be a grind. We are going to be in better shape this year and I’m 100-percent ready for the next step. Antonio and I have been waiting for this moment all our lives. We grew up watching Bensalem games. We have to end on a good note for our dad.”

The Morris family has one more coming up who could be even better than Antonio and Noah, 11-year-old Ella Morris, who is already 5-2 and has no problem standing up to her older brothers.

“Antonio and Noah always play against each other in the driveway, and I’m the one who’s always breaking them up (laughs). They don’t take it easy on Ella, either,” Ron said. “I’m going to miss the trips, the car rides, being around them so much. This will be a difficult adjustment, I’m going to miss the day-to-day, the great times. I have Ella coming up, but she’s going to miss her brothers, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the best of them, because of her brothers. I raised my children to be positive, to be nice to people and work their butts off. The game is definitely a part of them. We are a basketball family and Bensalem basketball is a part of their lives.”

It is why every night will be Senior Night for the Morris family this season—and why it will be so viscerally trying to say goodbye.

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Joseph Santoliquito is a hall of fame, award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.