Lauren Morgan
Family Tradition

Article from West Marine

Back

By John Gregg Watsonville, CA. (August 6, 2007) — It is easy to see when fourteen-year-old Lauren Morgan is out on the water that she has talent. 

That was probably a given from the very beginning since her mother Kerri is a very accomplished skier and her dad, Dr. Mike Morgan is an outstanding athlete who has set a number of records and won a boatload of tournaments during an outstanding career on the water.

Just recently the gifted young athlete set two pending Girls 2 national records on the same day.  Lauren, from Odessa, Florida leapt 106 feet in the jumping event and also scored 2 buoys at 38 feet in the slalom.  The current jump record was set back in 1996 and the current slalom record was established in 2004.  Miss Morgan chief rival in her division, Brittany Greenwood of Little Rock, Arkansas also jumped 106 feet a few days prior to Morgan’s effort and they may well have tied the record just days apart.

The American Water Ski Association's Technical Committee reviews all records before ratifying them and if everything goes all right, two well-known records may have fallen on the same day. 

“I expected to run 35 and I was mostly going for the slalom record and I knew that the jump record would be harder to get,” Lauren Morgan said.  “I was nervous because Brittany Greenwood has the record tied with me.  I was really surprised how far I went, I didn’t really think it was that far.  I have gone 104 before but she went 105 this past weekend.  I just knew that I had to bring it down and try and go that far.”

Both Morgan and Greenwood will square off again in a mater of days at Nationals but right now the focus is on enjoying the moment. 

“The slalom I know I had it in me.  Slalom has always been my favorite event,” Lauren Morgan explained.  “Just this past weekend, I’ve gotten a half in one a couple of times.  I just know that I had to get around one and pull hard and to get to two and stand up and it was very exciting!”

If you ask Lauren’s mother Kerri about her daughter, well, she says she is just like her dad.

“She is a carbon cop of her father,” Kerri Morgan confided.  “She is very determined when she decides she wants t do something, she is going to do it. To be honest with you the slalom record I thought she was closer to than the jump record.  There is another girl Brittany Greenwood that is pushing her a little and she has put it out there.  They are pushing each other in jump but a lot of people don’t realize that Lauren also has the slalom.”

Her father Dr. Mike Morgan is very well known throughout the world of water skiing and while he is pleasantly enjoying his daughter’s success he really isn’t too surprised. 

“I’m not surprised.  Being a record holder or winning a major event requires a lot of dedication and commitment and a lot of support and good coaching and equipment and she has really had the best,” Dr. Morgan confided.  “A lot of it has to come from within.  I think the most important thing when you are a youngster is getting the right equipment, the right coaching and we’ve made sure that she has had all those things.  Probably with some pretty good genes thrown in there also and having someone she can follow with myself and what I’ve been able to accomplish.  Also we have been able to give her some good tools to work with as far as handling stress, discipline and the value of hard work.”

Water skiing, however, wasn’t always Lauren’s first choice as a sport.  She was originally a tennis player but that all changed one summer.

“It’s funny because when she was nine years old we would asked her to ski and it was, ‘nope’, she didn’t want anything to do with it,” Kerri Morgan recalled.  “Then one day we finally got her out there and she has never quit since [laughter].”

Her dad has a vivid memory of when Lauren switched sports and once she took up water skiing she has never looked back. 

“It’s funny because there was a single moment in her life when we were at the Nationals competiton and skiing to her was something that adults always did.  We happened to show up early and we got to see Girls 1 compete in the Nationals,” Dr. Morgan recalled.  “So she got to see all the girl skiers go out there and some of them were actually younger than her and you could see the wheels turning in her mind, as far as if they can do it I can do it!  And they looked like they were having a lot of fun and they aren’t getting pushed to do it.  They want to ski and when we came back from the Nationals and I would say within a week; not only did she learn how to ski she was all ready running the slalom coarse.  She was off to the races.  She got a late start but within one year she qualified for the Nationals and won the regional competition.”

When you are as good as Lauren is in a single sport that sometimes provides difficult choices.  Lauren elected to be home schooled and that has meant spending her time at the Jack Travers Ski School with tutors and several other top young athletes.  The education can be very demanding and your life is also very focused because when you aren’t studying, well, you are skiing. 

“I knew that I had to decide if I wanted to go to a regular school and be with my friends, or do home schooling and get better at skiing,” Lauren Morgan explained.  “I really improved and I can focus better.  I actually have a house here at Jack Travers and I live here.  I have a tutor that teaches me all my subjects and then I ski and then do schoolwork.  Jonathon Travers, Zack Worden and Brandy Williams are all here.”

Keeping a good balance between education and athletics can always prove to be daunting but both of her parents are happy the way everything is working out. 

“She is very good with academics and she is a straight A student,” Kerri Morgan says.  “She does her schoolwork very well and she is in the ninth-grade.  Actually right now she is home schooled through Laurel Springs for kids and that’s for athletes and actors. In the summer it is easy.  In the spring and the fall it’s hard because she gets up and she will slalom in the morning before school.  One of her coaches Brenda Baldwin is her teacher and they work together and she is a former champion skier.”

The other life skill that Lauren has picked up along the way is her father’s work ethic and seeing what he has had to do to compete at a high level but also just as importantly that he has fun on the water.

”She is having a lot of fun.  She is a very regimented organized person and she likes being able to go out there and do her routine each day and having set a yardstick or a marker for herself, and being able to go out and challenge herself to prove it,” Dr. Morgan believes.  “She is her own worst enemy in the sense that she is competiting less against other people and more against herself.  She continually sets the bar higher each time she goes out.”

Still when both of your parents have an outstanding work ethic it is bound to rub off on their children. 

“I think so.  It is probably has as much to do with having seen that [hard work] comes to fruition.  As far as looking at the magazines and seeing the pictures and just interacting with me on a daily basis and knowing it isn’t all glitz and glamour and taking the first prize home,” Dr. Morgan believes.  “It is a lot of hard work and that hard work exists not only on the water but what you do off the water preparing.  Her diet and having a personal trainer that we spent a lot of time with this winter.  We saw that really helped her as well.  I think it is a combination of everything.”

Lauren will be the first to tell you that she likes both school and athletics and while she isn’t living at home right now she sees her folks quite often.  Of course, what she has picked up from her dad along the in terms of skiing has always been a great help.

“My parents only live about an hour away and they come down and visit a lot,” Lauren Morgan says.  “It’s good he helps me and he coaches me a lot.  It is kind of cool to have a dad like that.”