ULYSSES — Rebecca Morgan is the youngest of five children to parents Debbie and Michael Morgan and the second member of her family to head southeast for their college experience.
Like her older brother, Matthew, she too has continued her career at York College (Pa.), where she is a member of the women’s soccer program and the women’s track and field team.
Being the youngest child meant going to all her siblings’ games growing up and also starting her own athletic career from as early as she can remember.
“I played just about every sport I could growing up,” Morgan said. “In junior high is when I really started to like soccer the most, but Northern Potter only had a boys varsity team.”
That didn’t phase Morgan, who played four varsity seasons on the boys’ team despite many trying to convince her to go out for the school’s volleyball team instead.
“I wanted to prove everyone wrong that I could play against the guys,” Morgan said. “I think it ended up teaching me to play soccer in a different style and also that you cannot be intimidated and play scared.”
In her high school days, representing the Panthers and Lady Panthers programs, Morgan earned a total of 16 varsity letters between basketball, cross country, soccer and track & field.
She also represented the Lady Panthers in the Big 30 all-star basketball game in 2018, qualified for states in both cross-country and track and graduated as the school’s valedictorian in 2018.
Despite all of these different accolades, she was not heavily recruited to continue her soccer career.
From her visits to York’s campus, she knew this was the school for her, but she was not getting recruited to play collegiately at the school. She was hopeful to walk-on to the soccer team for her freshman season, and that is exactly what she did.
In her first two college seasons for the Lady Spartans, she played in 29 games and showed improvement from her first season to her second season by playing in more games and drawing her first college start against Catholic to open the 2019 campaign.
The 2019-20 school year also allowed Morgan the chance to join another familiar sport at the college level as she walked onto the women’s track & field team. She was able to participate in the winter of 2020 for the program’s indoor season and ran in a collection of meets as a distance and middle distance runner.
The program was back in action for outdoor season in 2021, but Morgan elected to participate in the women’s soccer shortened spring season in which they were able to play four games after their 2020 fall season was cancelled.
It has certainly been a unique two school years for Morgan, who still has four years of track & field eligibility remaining despite being with the program for two years already. As for soccer, she has two collegiate seasons of eligibility remaining, but she believes May of 2022 will likely be the end of the road for her college career at York.
“Grad school is not out of the picture for me, but I think this upcoming soccer season will be my last at York,” Morgan said. “I am excited to get back on the field for a full season because Coach (Kelly) Wakeman has really changed the culture of the program and has been an amazing coach so far. She has been so positive and we have had some great practices and training sessions together which makes me really hopeful for his fall.”
Morgan aims to become the best right back she can be this season as she moves from midfield to defense, and also to hopefully knock off the reigning Division III National Champions and Middle Atlantic Conference rival Messiah College during her senior year.
Aside from her experience as vice president with the Association for Supply Chain Management (ASCM) club that is joined with the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) club at York, she is also interning at Boeing this summer and is studying to to compete a certificate as a Certified Production and Inventory Management (CPIM).
This certification shows employers she has proven knowledge and skills for internal supply chain operations.
“I started my undergraduate career as a business administration major and later switched to marketing, but after my Intro to Modern Supply Chain class, I switched my major as did many of my classmates,” Morgan said.
This summer at Boeing, Morgan has gained first-hand knowledge about what it is like to work for one of the top firms in the entire world.
“My co-workers have been so kind, are very smart, and I cannot say enough about how amazing of a company Boeing is to work for,” she said.
Her colleagues at Boeing have made a great impression on her, but it is truly the support system back home that Morgan credits for helping her make all the opportunities she has had possible.
“The community engagement at Northern Potter is amazing,” Morgan said. “I can remember making it to states in basketball for the first time in many years and our community was so supportive of us. Having the whole town there in support is something that I think is unique to a small town like Ulysses.”
Morgan credits her parents, both of whom are employees of their home school district, for showing her the importance of hard work.
This summer, Morgan has been training, lifting and playing soccer recreationally in the York area to get ready for the quickly approaching 2021 soccer season. With a tough end to her sophomore year of college and a full year of COVID-19 disrupting her junior year, she is excited for the opportunity to get back to the game she loves.
