HALL OF FAME FEATURE: Anthony 'Salem' Morris '05

Arms extended, Anthony “Salem” Morris ‘05 is shown more than three feet in the air, soaring above the trenches to block a field goal attempt. Over the last two decades, one would be hard-pressed to perhaps find a more iconic Averett University athletics photograph captured like the one that memorable day in 2004 when the Cougars’ football team beat Ferrum College in three overtimes.

While that image stands out, it was actually another play by Morris later in the game that helped seal the victory that day and helped further cement Morris’ rightful place in the Averett Athletics Hall of Fame as a member of the 2021 class that will be inducted on Oct. 2 — 17 years to the day of that instant classic game.

Deadlocked at 38-38 after two overtimes, Ferrum had first possession in the third overtime and scored a touchdown. By rule, the Panthers had to attempt a two-point conversion instead of the normal extra point attempt beginning with the third overtime.

“All coach said after they scored was, ‘Salem, don’t let them score (a two-point conversion),’” Morris recalled.

A safety, Morris lined up against Ferrum’s top receiver, who was in the slot. 

“I knew exactly what he was going to do,” Morris recalled. “He was either going to motion over and come off on and run a slant or motion over and come off and run an out. I kept my angle right as he stepped to run the slant and I just stepped right up in between the ball and I got it.”

Morris picked off the two-point conversion attempt, Averett’s offense scored on its ensuing overtime possession, got the two-point conversion and the crowd rushed the field as the Cougars celebrated a 46-44 win over rival Ferrum.

Morris was in the right spot at the right time that day nearly 17 years ago. It’s been a theme throughout his life that saw him succeed at Averett, play pro football and earn training camp invites from the New York Giants, serve his country, start a family and now coach and teach in Arizona. 

“It’s weird how it worked out,” Morris said. “All I’ve got to say is that God always has a plan. You’re always where you’re supposed to be.”

Averett honestly wasn’t on Morris’ radar following high school. He had been on a couple recruiting trips, mostly to Division II schools, but decided to go a different route. 

“With the lack of knowledge and confidence of playing ball, I actually went to go sign up for the Army,” Morris recalled. 

Yet, as fate would have it, he couldn’t be processed at that time. Soon after returning home, he received a phone call from then-head coach Frank Fulton, who had just started the football program at Averett in 2000. After talking with his dad, they drove the three and a half hours from Suffolk to Danville to watch a few workouts. Morris spoke to the coaching staff and some of the players, and he ended up coming back later for an overnight visit and was sold on the school’s campus and environment.

“The fact that it was only going to be the second year (of the program), it gave me the opportunity to say hey, this is my opportunity to come out here and actually learn to play ball and be a part of something that’s brand new and could possibly build up to bigger things,” Morris recalled. 

The early days of Averett football were tough, and Morris’ freshman season in 2001 saw the roster dwindle from about 140 players to 40-something players a few games in. Although the drama from that situation nearly ended the Cougars’ season early and clouded the future of the program, Morris said the remaining roster rallied — and ultimately benefitted from the adversity.

“At that point, it forced all of us who stuck it out to grow and mature — not only as football players but as leaders and young men — because a majority of our team were freshmen and sophomores,” Morris stated. “At some point it felt like a broken season, but it forced us to dig deep and pulled out the best of a lot of us who stayed around and played that year. Then when we had the new coaching staff the next year, everything was different from what we knew. New coaches, new culture and we had to buy in. And that’s what we did. Coach Mike Dunlevy and his staff helped us buy in and become better men as well as players.”

With a new coaching staff and a culture change, things began to improve for Morris and the Cougars’ program. In 2003, Morris’ junior season, the Cougars had their first winning record. It’s not a coincidence that Morris began to thrive as a player that same season. 

“My sophomore year I was still young mentally. I was just trying to find my way and fit in,” Morris said. “I was a starter and doing some good things but I didn’t have all the concepts or understanding, and more importantly I didn’t have all the leadership skills that I felt that I needed. Come junior year, they were saying a lot of positive stuff in the media guide season preview that we had, so I felt like I really had to mature and step up to the high expectations. And then we were bringing in all these new guys and the quality coming in was actually a whole lot better. I felt like I needed to step up.”

That season, Morris finished with 62 tackles and one sack. During a three-game stretch midway through the year, Morris had four interceptions and returned two of them for touchdowns in consecutive weeks. 

“If it wasn’t for guys like Kelvin Hutcheson, Nick Tigue, Jason Everson and Paul Arena, I never would have developed into a leader my junior year,” Morris said. “I just started to fly around. … My confidence and my speed got a whole lot better and my confidence reading the field got better. Things started to slow down for me.”

In 2004 as a senior, Morris totaled 92 tackles — including 19 in that infamous Ferrum win — with four interceptions and 11 breakups. He finished his career with 303 career tackles — 150 unassisted, 153 assisted — which still ranked among the top three marks in program history. Morris holds the Averett program record with 12 career interceptions for a program-record 244 interception return yards and a shared record of two interceptions returned for touchdowns. Morris earned All-Conference First Team honors in 2003 and 2004 after making the Second Team in 2002. He also earned Virginia Sports Information Directors (VaSID) All-State First Team recognition in 2003 and 2004 and Roanoke Times All-State honors in 2004. Throughout his career, he was named the conference's Defensive Player of the Week three times and was named to the D3football.com Team of the Week twice. In the classroom, Morris also earned Academic All-Conference accolades.

“I appreciate it way more now because I was so hungry back then that I wanted it all,” Morris said of his stats and accolades. “We weren’t able to pull off too many winning seasons. My stats are my stats. I could have the best stats in the world but we didn’t accomplish much (as a team) as far as winning seasons and championships.”

Morris also said at the time he had a chip on his shoulder because in his mind he felt that he always was overshadowed by Hutcheson, his teammate and fellow Hall of Famer.

“I spent so much time being mad and upset at Kelvin Hutcheson, who is probably the greatest player ever to step foot on the Averett campus, and spent so much time being upset with him that it clouded what I wanted to do and what I could become,” Morris admitted. “But at the same time, I still used that energy to try to become better so I could be better than him. Later on down the line, if I would have thought better, I could have worked with him and the rest of the team to become even more dominant to where we could have won a ring or two before I left. After going back and looking at the mistakes that I did make, I can’t go back and change those mistakes.”

While Hutcheson’s talents pushed Morris to be better, it was Arena who helped inspire him. 

“Paul showed me the true meaning of grit and will,” Morris said. “He was always the smallest person on the field, but I don’t recall him ever missing a practice. He always fought every single day. In all the games he got in, he fought and played hard. … He helped me out. When I was ready to quit or when I was ready to give up, Paul would ask, ‘Why would you do that?’”

When Morris finished his four-year career with Averett football, he almost played basketball for the Cougars. Instead, he decided to continue his football training with an eye on trying to play professionally.

“My dad invested in a company to work on my speed and I went from running a 4.5 down to a 4.42 when I went to the Georgia Tech combine,” Morris recalled. “I was still small at 6-foot-2 and 187 pounds. That’s pretty small, and I’m all legs and arms. … But after that I was able to get an agent. At the time, I was getting calls to finish out seasons in Canada and a couple Arena League teams and NFL Europe. But I didn’t know any better. All I knew was that my agent got a call about entering me into the NFL Draft — which I thought was crazy. So at that moment I didn’t know any better and I turned down all these other possibilities. My dad stayed up every night watching the draft. … We didn’t get a call, but it was all right. I went to a couple more combines and started working out at Troy (University).”

Morris got his first arena football look with the Los Angeles Avengers. 

“That’s when I realized I really have speed,” Morris said, noting that his training had paid off. “I went out there and ran a 4.32 and that was in front of Eric Dickerson and the rest of the L.A. staff. Eric Dickerson said if I ran that again, he’d make sure I was on the team and he’d sign my shirt. I didn’t run another 4.32 but I ran a 4.34. So he signed my shirt and we were going through camp and I wanted to stay, but they wanted me to play Jack linebacker, which is the middle linebacker, and play receiver.”

Although Morris passed on that opportunity, others were opening up. He continued training and ran a 4.29 in front of 12 NFL scouts at Troy’s pro day. He also jumped a 44 ½-inch vertical.

“That’s when things started hitting the fan,” Morris said. “My agent was telling me I was getting calls from here, here and here. The next thing I know, he was like, ‘Forget all these calls. The Giants want you to come to camp.’ Mind you at that point I was playing arena2 with the Birmingham Steeldogs.”

Morris headed to camp with the NFL’s New York Giants, and although he said he felt he learned a lot and did some good things, the Giants ultimately let him go.

“One thing they told me was if you get to 205 (pounds) and you keep up what you’ve got, come on back,” Morris said of the Giants. “So I went back to arena2 and still worked out.”

Morris then ended up in Washington, D.C., for work, but returned to the arena ranks with the Mississippi Mudcats of the American Indoor Football Association (AIFA). Then, just like before, in the middle of the season he got a call from the Giants wanting him to come to camp.

“Now at this point when I was with the Giants, I made it even further,” Morris said. “I’m doing a whole lot better than I did the first time, moving around. Just playing arena ball makes you a faster player and a faster reactor. Right before they were signing people for preseason, Tom Coughlin walked up to me and handed me my envelope. He said, ‘Listen, you’re a natural. You’re technique is really bad but you’re natural and a little high (in technique). I’d love for you to maybe come back next year or maybe practice squad.’”

When he returned to his arena team, he’d been gone for a month and had been replaced. And that was that. It turned out to be the end of professional football for Morris.

Looking back, he laments about not focusing on working out the way he needed to and how he never truly got to play a full, uninterrupted season professionally.

“All my seasons were cut short, but I had opportunities to go and do something and I enjoyed each and every one of them,” Morris said. “Obviously there are things I wish I had done a lot differently. Instead of worrying about things I shouldn’t have been worrying about, I should have worried about the playbook and working out more. We all live with regrets, but I just had a blast. I was getting paid to play football and I had opportunities to meet people. It was funny because I was always up there with the upper echelon of athletes that I was playing against or playing with, and I knew I could have done so much more. The thing is that I just never got past 197 pounds.”

Out of football, Morris found himself working multiple hourly jobs down in Mississippi. He wasn’t happy. So he revisited an old plan.

“In life, it’s inevitable. You’re going to fail in something,” Morris said. “That’s life. But it’s not about failing. It’s about when one door closes, another one opens. It’s about how you react and how you get up from it.”

Morris grew up as a military kid. His dad served 23 years in the Navy. Although he was born in Philadelphia, Morris moved all over the world. Guam twice, Japan, Italy and quick stops in Germany and France. 

“I thought OK, now’s the time,” Morris said. “I always wanted to go serve my country, get my schooling and I wanted to travel.”

He enlisted in the Air Force, serving as a crew chief.

“At that time, I worked on the F16 and I did that for four of my seven and a half years,” Morris said. “And then I was on F15 and the C130s and became a staff sergeant and supervised. It was amazing. It allowed me to travel to Korea and brought me to Phoenix, went to Okinawa, Japan, and Singapore. … It brought the best out of me and brought the leadership out of me trying to give some of the younger guys that knowledge of some of the things I went through in life.”

Football also reentered Morris’ life while in Japan. He started playing and coaching with a semi-pro team that played other military bases and Japanese teams.

“That’s when I started coaching as well,’” he said. “So the second and third year I was a player and a coach. I think that really turned a lot of things around for me, too, because I got my confidence back. I felt like I knew what I was talking about and had some success — with some bumps and bruises of course. But I try to transfer that over to the kids that I train now with life lessons and football.”

Following seven and a half years in the military, Morris and his wife and two daughters returned briefly to the Virginia Beach area in June 2016. His wife Kisha then got a job in the Phoenix area, so Morris’ family headed back to Arizona, and he and his wife had a son soon after.

Morris began working in real estate, but was encouraged by his daughter to be a substitute teacher at her school. It eventually led to a full-time opportunity to teach and coach — right in Morris’ wheelhouse. He’s now in his fourth year, where he teaches eighth-grade math and leadership while also serving as the defensive coordinator for the football team, head coach for the track team and assistant coach for the basketball team.

Morris credits his family for continuing to inspire him. 

“My wife has been my rock,” he said. “The thing that keeps me going and makes me love her even more are my three beautiful kids. This is why I do what I do now. It’s not necessarily for the kids that I’m training, per se. My real drive and my real reason is for them to see what it looks like for someone to give their all and make something else better. … In whatever you do, you’ve got to work hard for it.

“It’s a whole lot of zig-zags on my path, but it’s my path,” Morris added. “It doesn’t define me but it definitely has made me who I am.”

And it seems Morris continues to find himself right where he needs to be — in life and now in the Averett Athletics Hall of Fame.