Morgan inducted into WMEA Hall of Fame

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Feb 17, 20160

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Mike Morgan

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Mike Morgan

Mike Morgan directs the horn section in junior high band class Tuesday morning. Morgan is in his 24th year at Colfax as a music teacher and football coach.

Morgan with band students.

They unloaded the bus at West Valley Friday with their leader gone. The seniors later led the band as they pumped out “Enter Sandman” in a third performance by the Colfax High Pep Band.

No leader was necessary; he had taught them, and he was in Yakima being named to the Washington Music Educators’ (WMEA) Hall of Fame.

Mike Morgan, a member of the Colfax School District staff since 1992, joined with a class of nine others.

At the ceremony Feb. 11 were representatives of his other identity. Greg Whitmore, head football coach and athletic director for Lind/Ritzville/Sprague, and Eric Nikkola, head football coach and athletic director at Reardan, were in the audience.

Morgan, head coach for Colfax football, met Whitmore and Nikkola when the were all assistant coaches, and now the two other league coaches were in Yakima to pay tribute.

“Besides being rivals, we found out we kind of liked each other,” Morgan said. “For a music educator’s conference, that might have been the first time two pure football coaches crashed their party.”

Morgan was raised in Vale, Ore., in an athletic and musical family. His father, Ed, played bluegrass.

“I can’t remember a time in my life when my dad and aunt and uncle weren’t playing a guitar and a fiddle,” he said.

Morgan’s first instrument was the alto saxophone. At Vale, in junior high, he was led by band director Jerry Seitz.

“He was probably the biggest musical influence on me,” Morgan said.

In the summer, Morgan mowed lawns and spent money on Beach Boys albums – 10 years after their heyday. Then it was the Eagles, whose songs Morgan played with his brother in the Morgan Brothers Band.

The family moved to Palouse after his freshman year of high school, where he graduated in 1982.

Finishing at WSU in 1987 with a B.A. in Music Education, Morgan was summoned back to Vale by his old football coach, who was now the district’s superintendent.

“I don’t know anything about music, that’s why I’m hiring you,” he told him.

Then the young teacher got a break in his other identity.

Morgan took a year off to go to Pullman to coach tight ends at WSU for Mike Price in the 1991-92 season.

“I was pretty sure I was going to be a college football coach,” he said.

But there were things to consider.

Running backs coach Ted Williams asked him something.

“Are you prepared to move eight times in the next 10 years?”

Morgan, with a wife and two children at that point, decided he was not.

“The Colfax job opened up that spring,” Morgan said.

Hired as an assistant coach and music teacher, he began his long tenure, which includes leading the jazz band, concert band, fifth and sixth grade band and the pep band.

“The pep band is the face of what we do in Colfax,” Morgan said. “That’s what people see, it’s what they’ll base their opinion of what kind of music program you have.”

That band, in its current lineup, features senior leaders he has taught since junior high; Ryan Reynolds on guitar, Chris Koenig and Cody Fulfs on trumpet and Austin Ledbetter at the drums.

As the football coach, he notices what the band is doing.

It is hard to tune it out.

“I could never study with music on,” Morgan said.

During football games, he keeps one earphone of his headset dead, so he can hear the band.

“If they make a mistake, I turn around and they know,” he said. “We’ll fix it on Monday.”

As basketball season now enters the playoffs, the Bulldogs’ pep band hopes to play at Spokane Arena in March before Morgan’s focus turns fully to jazz and concert-band season.

In May, he will take the jazz band to the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival competition for his 22nd year.

The WMEA inducted its first Hall of Fame class in 1998 and adds up to 10 honorees each year.

“I didn’t get to this position by myself,” said Morgan. “I have had such great students in my career and such great parents in my career. I’m proud of the fact that I’m in Colfax. It’s a great honor for all of us, not just Mike Morgan.”

Aside from being inducted, he gave three presentations at the WMEA conference.

“Everyone raises their eyebrows at a band conference when I tell them I’m a head football coach,” he said. “At athletic director meetings, they raise their eyebrows when they find out I’m a band director.”