From Dare to the ’Dale: Legendary High School Teacher and Coach Darrel Morton Leaves Hillsdale Legacy
Written by Doug Goodnough
His running career started on a dare. As a shortstop on the Otisville (Michigan) LakeVille High School baseball team, Darrel Morton, ’64, saw some of his friends practicing on the nearby track and yelled at one of them.
“You run like an old woman!” he said, joking. However, the track coach also heard him and didn’t think it was funny.
“He came over and reamed me out,” Morton said. “I was embarrassed and was a shy kid, but I said, ‘Well, I know I can beat him. He’s my neighbor. We grew up together.’ He said, ‘You come out here tomorrow night, and we’ll have a challenge.’ I’ll just do it for the heck of it. So we ran the mile, and I beat him.”
Although there were just three meets left in his senior season, the coach invited Morton onto the team. Despite his inexperience as a runner, he finished third at the state meet in the mile in a time of 4 minutes, 31 seconds. However, he was eventually disqualified for inadvertently cutting in during the race.
His coach had seen enough to think Morton had a career as a college runner and took him to Western Michigan for a visit. Morton said Western wasn’t a good fit, so on the way back to Otisville they stopped by Hillsdale College, where his coach knew Hillsdale football coach and athletic director Frank “Muddy” Waters. Dr. Leo Phillips was trying to establish a cross country team at Hillsdale and lobbied Waters and fellow coaching legends Johnny Williams and Dan Goldsmith to give Morton a running scholarship.
“We literally had no money in our family,” Morton said of the idea of attending college. “And my parents didn’t even know what college was.”
Dr. Phillips eventually offered Morton a scholarship, and hitchhiking nearly 140 miles from his hometown to campus, Morton began his college experience.
Morton helped establish the cross country program, along with teammates Wendell Shiffler, ’65, and Doug Hansen, ’66, who eventually took over Hillsdale’s track and cross country programs as coach.
In those days, workouts included running to the Hillsdale County Fairgrounds, where they would do laps on the quarter-mile horse track. The cross country team steadily improved and increased its exposure on campus. In fact, Morton said one of their races had the finish line inside the football stadium during halftime of the Dales football game.
“That was really exciting,” he said.
The cross country team eventually qualified for the NAIA national meet in Omaha, Nebraska. Morton also qualified for the track and field nationals in the half mile.
Morton ran the mile, two-mile, and the mile and half-mile relays during track season, and he eventually was named captain. He also joined the wrestling team as a sophomore and contributed to the team in the 147-pound weight class.
All that experience served Morton well after he graduated as a biology major with his teaching degree. Returning to LakeVille High School, he spent more than three decades coaching and teaching.
“I never interviewed,” Morton said of getting a teaching job at LakeVille. “That was how I started.”
He coached track and field for 35 years and cross country for 10 years. Morton also coached basketball, football, and wrestling over his career, as well as serving as LakeVille’s athletic director. He was a member of the inaugural class inducted into LakeVille High School’s Hall of Fame in 2015.
Now retired, he and his wife, Diana, enjoy watching their three grandsons—Ben, Nick, and Zac Affholter—play football for the Chargers. The Mortons’ daughter, Darcy Morton Affholter, ’97, and son-in-law, Brad Affholter, ’97, were also standout volleyball and football players, respectively, for Hillsdale.
Morton is proud of his family’s Hillsdale legacy. He attended the recent 50/60-Year Reunion event on the Hillsdale campus, where he had a chance to catch up with former classmates, including Shiffler and Don Zimmerman, ’64.
“We can feel good about it. We started something,” said Morton of his role on Hillsdale’s early cross country teams. “That was an interesting time in my life.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in May 2024