RIDGWAY — Barry Morgan has been behind the microphone for some of District 9’s most memorable sports moments.
He was on the call for most of Smethport’s record-setting football run from 1989-’96, when the Hubbers won an unprecedented 67-consecutive regular season games and advanced to the PIAA Class A title game in 1992.
He broadcasted Johnsonburg’s journey to the 2013 state title game in basketball and was on the call again a few months later when that same core of Rams led the school to a state championship in baseball.
Most recently, Morgan has spent the last few summers narrating the Elk-McKean Senior League All-Star baseball team, the two-time state champions that have traveled around the country for their regional and national games.
Through it all, Morgan estimated that he’s done some 2,500 games over his 32-year radio career that’s been spread out over three stations: WLBI in Kane, WBRR in Bradford and, since 2008, his current home with Ridgway’s WDDH “The Hound.”
After a career in insurance and a coaching stint, Morgan said that he settled into exactly what he wanted to do.
“I have to thank all of the station owners like Denny Heindl (at The Hound) that let me do games whenever I wanted,” Morgan said. “When the game is over I can go home. I don’t have to hear from parents about their kids not getting in the game or write something for the newspaper.
“It’s been a great experience and it’s been a whole lot of fun. Plus, it keeps me young.”
MORGAN’S path to the broadcasting booth is certainly a unique one.
After coaching and selling insurance in Sheffield, which Morgan admits “was not the most fun thing to do,” he moved back to his hometown of Kane with his family in the late 1980s.
There, he took the boys varsity coaching job at Kane High School and began to work at WLBI in sales.
Soon after, Morgan moved in front of the microphone and formed an on-air partnership with Bob Parana. The duo began to broadcast games — notably calling the unprecedented success of those Hubber teams under coach Carl Defilippi.
“Parana was the first and probably the most unique (partner) I’ve had out of the bunch,” Morgan said. “We did a Smethport state playoff game once — I think at West Allegheny — and they wouldn’t let us in the press box. So Bob and I literally had to stand on top of the press box in our orange hunting suits. It was snowing like crazy and we got interviewed by John Sedko from Pittsburgh because it was so crazy.”
The pair became close to Defilippi, who is in the Pennsylvania Football Coaches Hall of Fame and is the only coach in Big 30 history to be named Coach of the Year three times.
“Carl was an amazing guy. He taught me so much about life and coaching and he was just so thorough in everything that he did,” Morgan recalled. “(Bob and I) thought everything was so cool because we were expecting to go deep in the state playoffs with everybody. What a run they had.”
Back in the “old days of radio,” he and Parana had plenty of adventures setting up their equipment — nowadays done simply with cell service and a computer.
“We had to go to Coudersport for a game once and we had to run a phone line from a lady’s house 500 feet from the field,” Morgan laughed. “We were climbing up trees and branches with our lines just to do a game.”
MORGAN left his post at Kane in 1991, but returned a few seasons later and coached the Wolves again until 2001.
After spending the better part of the next decade calling games for WLBI, which included Elk County Catholic’s trip to an undefeated season and a state championship in boys basketball in 2006, Morgan took a job at WBRR in Bradford in 2007. There, he teamed up with Frank Williams for Bradford High School events, and with late Era sports writer and former Pitt-Bradford sports information director Greg Clark for Panther games.
“Being the color guy for Greg Clark was something,” Morgan said. “But I enjoyed my time in Bradford and I got to do things like college baseball and softball that I’d never done.”
After a two-year stint in Bradford, Morgan relocated to Ridgway and began his job at The Hound — a country music station at 97.5 FM — serving as sports director and senior sales rep.
Since then, Morgan’s voice has served as the soundtrack to what has been a decade of Elk County dominance around District 9.
THE FATHER of three and grandfather of nine was there as the Johnsonburg Rams — led by Cole Peterson and Cameron Grumley — went on that remarkable 2012-13 run that featured a District 9 championship and then a trip all the way to the PIAA Class A title game.
The season, which ultimately ended with a loss to Vaux, featured one of the biggest upsets in state playoff history.
“That Jburg boys team beat Lincoln Park, a powerhouse, that year and that was something,” Morgan said. “I think it was 59-53 at the old Clarion gym and nobody in the world expected them to win. It was so neat sitting next to all these announcers from the WPIAL (Pittsburgh), and they were beside themselves that the little hicks from the sticks beat them up.”
That same core of players, led by Peterson, who went on to play Division I baseball at St. Bonaventure and is currently in the Detroit Tigers organization, then began to blow through their opponents on the diamond and made sure to bring PIAA gold back to Elk County this time around.
“Probably one of the greatest games I ever did was when ‘Burg beat Bishop McCort in the second round of the playoffs,” Morgan recalled. “McCort had been a state winner the previous year and they were up something like 6-0 in the sixth inning. We were heading to a commercial break and I told the listeners, ‘Don’t shut off the radio because these kids never give up. Something’s going to happen.’ And then they scored six runs to tie it up and ended up winning in like the 10th inning.”
The next year, Morgan called Elk County Catholic’s run to the state championship in baseball — as the Crusaders went a perfect 26-0 before losing 2-1 in the title game — and the following year narrated ECC’s journey to a state championship win in softball.
“It’s unbelievable,” Morgan said of all the success in Elk County’s small towns. “But that’s what keeps you going and I’ve been so fortunate.”
OF COURSE, a broadcaster is only as good as his partners in the booth, and Morgan was effusive in his praise of his colleagues over the years.
At WDDH, Morgan has primarily teamed up with J.J. Michaels, who he first hired when Michaels was 14 and “has the best voice of anybody I ever worked with,” as well as Rick Porter, who is “the ultimate guy to do a game with (because of) all of his knowledge.”
That trio alternates on football, basketball and the spring sports while Morgan teams up with Barry Johnson for one of the more challenging sports to call on radio: High school wrestling.
“Doing wrestling is a neat job because we are the only station that does it in this part of D9,” Morgan noted. “We stream it on the phone apps and have a huge listening audience.”
Morgan is also plenty thankful for his wife of 38 years, Shirley, who certainly had to accommodate some unique work schedules over the years.
So after 32 years on air, thousands of trips down the 219 and too many advertising reads, what keeps Morgan coming back year after year?
“I think it’s just the thrill of the game and watching the kids grow up,” he said. “I’m at the point in my life now having done this (so long) that some of the kids I coached way back in the ‘70s in Sheffield are grandparents now and their grandkids are playing. You look and say, ‘I can’t be that old.’
“But it’s just doing something that I like to do. To me, there’s nothing better. I’m still a very competitive person and this helps take the edge off sometimes.”
