To the entire Morehouse family,
Welcome back and thank you. As we open the 2026-27 athletic year, I want to take a moment to reflect on what our student-athletes, coaches, and this entire community built together in 2025-26, and to share where we go from here.
A Championship Year
This past year was, by every measure, one of the finest in the history of Morehouse Athletics. Our Maroon Tigers captured the SIAC Men's Commissioner's Cup for the second consecutive year, earning back-to-back honors as one of the premier men's athletic departments in our conference.
A few highlights from a year defined by championships and growth:
- Four SIAC Championships… men's cross country, men's basketball, men's indoor track and field, and men's outdoor track and field.
- Commissioner's Cup and Georgia Power Citizenship Award… first time in Morehouse College Athletic History to win award in the same year.
- Cross Country's third consecutive SIAC title, led by Brian Kemei, who claimed his third straight SIAC Runner of the Year award, with Willie Hill earning Coach of the Year.
- Basketball's return to glory…our first SIAC Tournament Championship since 2003 and our first trip to the NCAA Division II Tournament since 2018, under first-year head coach Larry Dixon, who set the program record for wins by a first-year coach. JerMontae Hill and Dixon were both named HBCU All-Stars Co-National honorees.
- Track and Field's historic Triple Crown… The first in SIAC history, sweeping cross country, indoor, and outdoor titles in the same academic year, and pushing Coach Hill's career total to 51 SIAC championships and two additional Coach of the Year Awards.
- Baseball's breakthrough season, setting a modern-era program record for wins and posting its best SIAC finish since 2006. The Maroon Tigers took home the SIAC Freshman of the Year as well as the Coach of the Year awards.
- Football's real progress, including our first Homecoming victory since 2019 and our first three-game winning streak since 2021.
- Golf's national stage performance, finishing as the top NCAA Division II HBCU program at the PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship, following a program best third place finish in the SIAC.
- At least 14 SIAC Weekly Honors and multiple national HBCU All-Stars recognitions across our programs.
- National recognition for the athletic administration. The program was nationally recognized by Dr. Cavil's Inside the HBCU Sports Lab with the top Mid-Major Athletic Director Award and A.D. Drew was recognized as the Black College Nines SID of the Year.
These accomplishments belong to our student-athletes and coaches first. But they don't happen in isolation.
Gratitude Where It's Due
None of this is possible without the people and institutions standing behind our young men every day.
To our
alumni, your presence at games, your mentorship of our student-athletes, and your investment of time and resources are the foundation this department is built on. Many of you wore the Maroon and White yourselves, and your continued belief in this program means more than you know.
To our
corporate partners, your support makes possible the facilities, resources, and opportunities our student-athletes need to compete and win at the highest level. Partners such as the Zaxby's, Georgia Access, and others made contributions throughout the year to support Morehouse athletics. Thank you for believing in the mission of Morehouse Athletics and investing in these young men.
To our
community partners, throughout Atlanta and beyond, thank you for opening doors, welcoming our student-athletes into your organizations, and standing with this program in ways both seen and unseen. Thank you to the East Point Convention and Visitors Bureau for extending hospitality to Morehouse athletics.
To the entire
Morehouse College community, faculty, staff, students, and families, your energy in the stands and your pride in this institution fuel our teams in ways that show up on the scoreboard and far beyond it.
And I want to specifically recognize
President Bowman and the Morehouse College Board of Trustees. Their strategic vision and steadfast commitment to Morehouse Athletics have been vital to everything we accomplished last year. Championships are not won by coaches and student-athletes alone, they are made possible by institutional leadership that invests in excellence and holds a standard for this College. We are deeply grateful for their partnership.
What This Year Taught Us? And What Comes Next?
A great year happens. A great program is built, day in and day out, on the work nobody sees. As proud as I am of what we accomplished in 2025-26, I'm equally proud of how it was won: through discipline, consistency, and a genuine love for this game and this institution. There is real joy in that daily journey, and it's a joy we intend to keep at the center of everything we do.
But our mission has never been about championships alone. Our deepest purpose is to use athletics to prepare men who are ready not just for their sport, but for life, for leadership, for family, for community, for the world they'll enter after Morehouse. A trophy case tells only part of the story we're trying to write.
What last year proved is what our young men are capable of. The challenge in front of us now is to make that level of excellence the standard, not the exception. That is the work of this coming year: building on a true culture of excellence and developing every one of our student-athletes holistically, academically, professionally, spiritually, and personally.
We're grateful to everyone who has walked this journey with us, and we invite this entire community to keep walking it with us as we chase what's next.
LET'S GO HAVE A GREAT YEAR!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
True Forever
Harold Ellis '92
Athletic Director
