The past 12 months have been very good to young Julian Morgan, something Emmanuel Wolff and the rest of the Senior High Basketball rising stars in Ghana must take note.
In the last year, the Mfantsipim ace has seen himself win the Sprite Ball Championship with his school and now crowned the Best Male High School Player for 2012 at this year’s Ghana Basketball Awards.
Morgan has become a dominant figure and an improved player from 2009 when he made his first start as a first year student at Mfantsipim.
After four years of playing and seemingly embracing the role of villain, the youngster has turned everything around.
He used 2012 as a vessel to get noticed with swash-buckling performance that got him many admirers.
And now he’s at that point-one that saw him lay claim to all of the aforementioned feats and transform himself both as a person and athlete.
All the while, Morgan became someone stars like Edwin Sarfo Aboagye can come to not only admire, but on many levels, emulate.
Realizing Stardom Is a Responsibility
The Sprite Ball Championship is not all smiles.
It’s a serious competition which has gained inches in the Ghanaian press. It cannot therefore be all fun and games – especially for future stars.
Enjoying one’s self and what they do is completely acceptable. After all, these guys are amateurs basketball players. Therefore they must understand that to become a super star is not just a gift, it’s a burden as well.
Morgan admission that he needed to assert himself as a responsible player, teammate and person led to massive changes and modifications in his demeanor that David Akuffo himself acknowledges”
“He muted his on-court celebrations. He cut the jokes.”
Simply put, Morgan committed to becoming more responsible, a devotion that culminated in a historic year for him and his Mfantsipim School.
Morgan’s game entailed taken all the motion out of the game, but it require limiting argued calls, exaggerated facial expressions and approaching every game against every opponent the same way.
Reject complacency
Morgan continues to improve day after day.
No one is perfect and the fact that anyone realizes that is half the championship-caliber battle.
Once you accept that you’ve reached your peak as a player, you have set precedent for complacency.
Once you become complacent, you feel the need not to prove nothing. From there, you lose that drive.
You lose that productive chip that should always be placed upon your shoulder. Morgan has never lost it. He’s only accentuated.
Complacency is the enemy of progress, and a lack of progress is the enemy of success.
Morgan’ jump shooting was criticized, so he honed his perimeter mechanics. He began to rely too heavily on his rim and perimeter attack, so he materialized a post game.
A year that serves as a message to all mushrooming talents; one that makes it clear settling for what you have and what you can already do isn’t acceptable.
