After hanging up his cleats, whistle and clipboard, Jack Morrell is now giving up his keys as the driver education teacher at Iola Middle School come August. Morrell taught driver education in Iola for the past 38 years, with 40 years of teaching overall. He coached, umpired and refereed for just as long.
“After 40 years in education, I have no desire to teach or coach or umpire,” Morrell said. “I’m going to find something else to do.”
Morrell, 62, started his teaching career at Wabaunsee High School in Alma during the summer of 1974, fresh from graduating Kansas State University. There weren’t a lot of teaching jobs, so his friend recommended that he get his driver education certificate.
“There’s been some close calls,” Morrell said. “I’ve never been in a wreck. There’s been a lot of adrenaline-raising situations. Things like that happen to your best drivers. You can’t control what other people do.”
The job at Wabaunsee led to a job at Quenemo High School. The high school only had 40 or so students, which also allowed him to coach several sports. He coached football, basketball, track and field and he served as the school’s athletic director. He also taught at Crest High School for one summer before moving to Iola, where he taught driver’s education during the summers at Iola Middle School. He began teaching driver’s education during the summers in the Humboldt school district in 2005.
Over his career at Iola, the better question to ask is what hasn’t he taught because the list includes K-12 physical education, biology, reading, yearbook, web page, civics, typing, multimedia, newspaper, health and classes he can’t remember. His coaching career followed the same path.
“I’ve coached a little bit of everything,” Morrell said. “I’ve coached my children in softball, baseball and soccer — in the rec leagues. I’ve coached football here in Iola for 33 years. I’ve coached basketball in Iola for 31 years. I coached track at Iola for 37 years.”
His favorite sport to coach was actually eighth grade basketball practices.
“I’m a teacher. ‘Coach’, I think is a bad term,” Morrell said. “I’m a teacher and I love the practices since it’s so much like a classroom. A kid would go ‘Oh, I get it’ almost every practice with eighth-graders.”
Morrell got his start in coaching by chance. His first gig came when he was 17 for the Blue Mound High School baseball program because they had no coaches.
“I had two younger brothers that wanted to play baseball, so I coached all three levels that summer,” he said. “Then I continued on.”
Not only did Morrell teach and coach, he also was a mainstay as an umpire for 47 years, beginning when he was just 14. He gave that up last summer. This past year was his last season refereeing high school basketball games as well, after 12 years of service. He also refereed countless years in recreational leagues.
Just like coaching, he had gotten his opportunity to umpire more by chance than seeking it out.
“When I was 14, I was sitting in study hall in high school and we played fast pitch softball instead of football in the fall,” he said. “The coach comes over and says ‘I need an umpire’ so I ask ‘Will I get out of school?’”
He enjoyed it so much, he kept up with it. Recently, he knew he wanted to stop after it hadn’t become as much fun.
“I knew I was moving to Texas and it just wasn’t fun any more,” Morrell said. “It’s kind of a societal attitude thing. It’s OK to jump on the referees even though if you compare the mistakes referees or umpires make compared to the players or coaches. I mean we make one compared to their 10.”
