Mark Morrow steps down as girls basketball coach at Twin Valley
Jul. 22—Mark Morrow tried to figure out a way to make it work, tried to come up with a plan where he could be the girls basketball coach at Twin Valley in 2021-22 and watch his daughter, Ava, play her freshman season at Holy Family.
"I even went as far as got her college schedule and looked at the high school schedule and kind of overlaid them on a calendar," Morrow said Wednesday. "I just didn't see it happening. I didn't want to give less of a commitment to the high school team than they deserved."
So, after wrestling with the decision, Morrow has decided to step down as the Raiders girls basketball coach after a highly successful six-year tenure.
"Believe me, I still want to coach, 100%," he said. "I love being up there. I love the team. It's all personal right now. I want to kind of do the dad thing for a little bit, go see Ava play in college."
Morrow led the Raiders to unprecedented heights in compiling a 121-45 record. He guided Twin Valley to two outright division titles, five Berks playoffs appearances, six District 3 Tournament berths and four trips to the PIAA playoffs, twice making the second round.
The Raiders made their first appearance in a district title game when they played for the Class 5A championship in 2020.
Last season, they went 9-2 to win the Berks II title, 17-8 overall and reached the District 3 Class 5A quarterfinals. All-division pick Natali Foster heads the list of returnees.
It's worth noting that Twin Valley went 0-10 in the division, 3-18 overall the season before Morrow took over. The Raiders improved to 5-5, 15-10 his first season and were on their way.
"I know we've had success," Morrow said. "I would say that success was sitting there in the players that they had. They just needed to kind of believe it a little bit. That first year I thought was critical for us to have a little bit of success, which we did.
"I think by them seeing that you can win and you can play, and they can compete with good teams in the county and outside of the county, that kind of helped and it really snowballed."
Morrow knows he's been blessed with talent. Peyton McDaniel was a two-time Berks Player of the Year and three-time All-State pick who scored 2,102 career points and is now at James Madison. Ava Morrow finished her career with more than 1,000 points and was All-Berks this past season. Taylor Knorr was an All-Berks pick in 2016.
There have been numerous all-division selections.
"We were lucky," he said. "We had some athletes up there that were really good athletes. We got a good influx of talent and that helped."
There were plenty of memorable nights in the gym for Morrow — such as when McDaniel scored her 2,000th point in a district quarterfinal at home in 2020 or when his daughter hit the 1,000-point milestone last season — but those are just moments along the way.
"I tell you the thing I'm most proud of is the culture we have there, and all the girls enjoying being a part of the team, knowing that it's just one unit," said Morrow, who hopes to coach again. "That's a culture that becomes infectious. It goes down to the youth level, the excitement that you see from those kids when they come up and watch games. That kind of culture and the atmosphere is something that I'm really proud of.
"The wins, yep. Every coach wants to win. The wins were fun, but I think it's just a byproduct of the culture that those kids developed for the last six years."
