Out of the shadows: Army cross country captain Isaac Morris, of Spokane, has found a group to lean on through family tragedy

In the summer of 2021, an eight-man freshman class joined the cross country team at the U.S. Military Academy, drawn as always from points across the country – upstate New York, rural Ohio, Boulder, Colorado, Spokane.

The plebes endured all the highs and lows typical of athletes in that first college year, wedged in among the daily demands of West Point life: the relentless structure, rigorous academics, rules both necessary and petty, the discipline enforced by barking upperclassmen. A few battled injuries that derailed their running for a time; two made the varsity that competed at the Patriot League championships.

Any given year at West Point, up to 15% of the new cadets who arrive that first summer for what’s called Beast Barracks might quit within weeks. In the next two years, before the military obligation kicks in, another 10% may leave. Some athletes abandon that dream to narrow their focus.

Today, just one of those eight 2021 freshmen remains on the team.

The one who may have had the most compelling reasons to give it all up.

Isaac Morris may not see it that way. He is outfitted with a sense of mission that predates his time at West Point – the school he chose because “it felt like nothing else fit me.” In his lowest moments, born from a series of staggering family misfortunes, he has found comfort in his running, his teammates and even the minute-by-minute academy routine. They didn’t fill the loss, but in effect they medicated it.

“I don’t think that having every second of your day occupied is necessarily a bad thing,” he said. “It’s good to realize that life goes on – life grows around the tragedies you have.”

He’s chosen to grow with it.

Morris is Army’s 2024 cross country captain, the only senior – or “firstie” in West Point argot – on a team of talented underclassmen aiming to regain their place atop Patriot, running the program established in the pre-COVID years. He is closing in on graduation and commission as a second lieutenant, and a posting he hopes will lead him into military intelligence. He consumes books on leadership and tries to put their lessons into practice daily with teammates and fellow cadets.

And he runs, shadows urging him along.

In a city with a tradition of producing gifted, accomplished runners, Isaac Morris didn’t leave oversized footprints in Spokane. He blossomed late at North Central High School – finishing fourth in state as a senior in 2019 – only to then see his last track season erased by the pandemic. His West Point entrance was delayed a year when admissions were scaled back, so he took classes from the University of Washington remotely and ran on his own.

Those West Point aspirations caught his father off guard, though his own days as an Army Ranger in the 1980s likely planted the seed.

“I don’t remember telling many stories, but then he quoted one of them,” Joe Morris said. “I guess it doesn’t take much for a young mind to latch on to something. But he’s not a real ‘military’ guy. He’s more of a rebel.”

True, even in his fourth year at the academy, Isaac Morris still chafes at some of “the stupid rules – and that’s horrible of me,” he said. “I should buy in fully. But there’s a better way to live life than being a bot.”

Yet in most respects, the buy-in is full – and never more so than in the pride he feels for the academy and especially the Army singlet.

“You’re part of a tradition, a legacy, and it’s not about just yourself,” Morris said. “It’s about putting the jersey in a better place while you’re here, and carrying that forward. I’d argue that our program has some of the more successful men that go into the Army. Some have come back – Delta Force, Special Forces, Rangers – and tell us, ‘This program set me up for success.’ ”

It’s exactly what Morris had envisioned upon enrollment. Then his world started being turned upside down.

Barely a month into his plebe year, Morris got a visit from his mother, Emily Ross – unexpected, and yet not a surprise, necessarily. “I just wanted to do this,” she told him, and it fit with his description of her as free-spirited and spontaneous.

But a month later his father called with word that Ross had died in a crash involving four vehicles north of Deer Park not long after nightfall, her car veering into the northbound lane and hitting a semi-truck.

“My mom was my biggest supporter,” he said. “I remember a letter she wrote for me before state cross country, something along the lines of, ‘You’re in the prime of your life, take advantage of it, don’t miss your shot’ – inspiring, mother-like words, but they really hit home. A lot of what I do is for her, trying to embody her values.”

Already in the midst of what he called a “turbulent” year, Morris struggled for weeks to regain an emotional equilibrium. A week or so before his mother’s death had come the news of Joe Morris being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. After his first chemotherapy, his weight dropped to 110 pounds, and as he tried to cope with treatment he developed cysts, severe eczema and even a burst appendix.

“Doctors said he had no more than two years,” Morris said. “The appendix should have been his death sentence because of all the infection and the toll leukemia takes on your immune system. And it was emotional. When he’d call me at West Point, he’d be crying and saying, ‘If this is the last time I talk to you, I love you.’ But when he came through the thick of it, you could see him become more optimistic.”

It’s been three years now, and while Joe Morris “can’t be sure what’s kept me alive,” he is in remission, albeit with little endurance and a personal outlook that is, he admitted, day to day.

And at West Point, after a foot injury limited him as a freshman, Isaac Morris began finding his groove – 12th in the Patriot cross country meet in 2022, sixth on the track at 5,000 meters in the spring of 2023.

But tragedy wasn’t through with his family yet.

On the night of Sept. 23 the next fall, Morris’ first sergeant came to his room with orders to follow him to the tactical NCO’s office.

“It’s 10 o’clock and I’m getting into bed and I’m like, ‘What did I do this time?’ ” he said. “I’m not a fan of all the rules and so I’m in trouble, right? But then it’s my dad on the phone …”

Daniel Morris, Isaac’s older brother by two years with a history of depression, was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head at the family home.

“This one hit me even harder,” Morris said. “That’s my brother, my best friend. He’s only 22 and he had so much potential.

“I remember writing papers in high school and he’d come over and say, ‘How about you word it like this …’ and out would come the most intellectual thing I’d ever heard. I’m at the computer telling him to say it one more time, typing each word because it was something I could never come up with myself. But he was also a tortured mind, and I knew he got worse after the loss of my mother. It just seemed like he was too smart for the world.”

Once again, the Morris family – Joe, Isaac and his younger sister Madeleine – was set reeling. And when Morris returned to West Point, things spiraled. He ran well enough through the cross country season, but then struggled. His girlfriend on the women’s team broke up with him after an 18-month relationship.

He was edgy, frustrated and largely unhappy outside the cocoon of his team.

“I’m thinking that I have all the risk factors for depression and suicide and I’m in the Army – this does not look good,” he said. “And I was surprised that no one – not my tac NCO or officers in the cadet chain of command – ever really reached out to me. This could have been a horrible situation and nobody would have done anything about it. In the Army, suicide is a huge problem.

“My roommate lost his dad a few months before I lost my mom freshman year, and so we have a lot to talk about – loss and grieving. And another friend lost his mother in car accident. It can be really raw. But if we just try to live our lives without talking, what do you do with those emotions when someone close to you dies?”

Morris has found some solace in counseling at West Point, though he’s critical of an academywide program that’s supposed to address emotional issues as being “just for show.”

But in the end, the best balm of all has come from the act of running and the support of teammates.

“Running, in my mind, is really transformative,” he said. “Some people in the program say that if they’d gone to another school, they’d be running faster. Maybe that’s true, but I don’t care. I love having Army across my chest and the flag on my back.

“Graduating from NC, I’ve heard older guys say that when you go to run in college, it’s not going to be the same – you won’t be with a group of people as tight. That was their experience. I’d like to tell them, though, that they’re wrong. I’ve found an even tighter group of men than I did at NC. These are men that will do anything for you, that have so much commitment and perseverance – the ones who stay. It’s an amazing feeling.”

And they all share the runner’s ultimate destination: the very next step.