Airport girls soccer coach Keith Morris has over 300 wins and led the Eagles to multiple region championships. But the 20-plus-year coach recently made the tough decision to retire from roaming the sidelines.

Morris has been a women’s soccer coach at Airport since 2002. He is also the head of the school’s math department, a job in which he continues to serve.

“It is definitely difficult to step away. I love those girls. They’re great kids,” Morris said. “I’ll miss the kids and the parents. I love the parents, I love the practice, I love the games, I love the competition. I’m definitely going to miss it, thought for sure I would probably coach until I actually retire from teaching.”

Morris decided to step down and commit fully to his teaching job and family. His kids are preparing for college, and after years of late nights, he now has more free time to connect with his children.

“I am looking forward to spending more time with the family,” Morris said. “I’m already missing [coaching], but I do look forward to spending time with my son and my daughter before they hopefully go off to college here soon, just to make some memories with my family.”

Morris’ coaching journey began like many coaches, playing their sport in high school. Morris played at Lexington County’s Brookland-Cayce High School. He got his start at Airport as a JV coach before eventually being promoted to head varsity coach. He’s also coached for a couple of local club teams.

“I enjoyed it a lot. I love giving it back to the community,” Morris said. “I’ve done all the club stuff, too, but I really enjoy the high school the best. That’s for sure.”

It was never Morris’ intention to become a high school coach. He started his teaching job at Airport, expecting to do only that.

“I never dreamed of being a coach, that’s for sure,” Morris said. “One of my first few years of teaching, I had a lot of the girls soccer players in my AP Calculus class, and they invited me to come watch them play, and next thing I know, I’m on the bench with them and helping out the coach. Next thing I know after that, I’m the coach.”

Since stepping on the sidelines, Morris has taken the Airport soccer team to new heights. He reached his 300th career win in 2023 and led Airport to multiple region soccer titles, including back-to-back in 2007 and 2008.

His success spans decades. Even today, the Airport soccer team is still competitive in one of the state’s toughest 4A regions. The Eagles posted 15-win seasons in each of the past two years, including a 16-4-1 2024 season.

“All of this is not because of me, it’s because of the kids and parents,” Morris said. “Getting win No. 300 was pretty cool a year and a half ago. I think we’ve had like 22, 23 straight winning seasons. So that’s pretty cool. I made the playoffs every year, except for two. I think one of those was COVID. So it’s just been a lot. We’ve done a lot.”

Building a program is not easy, especially at a public school. The talent is homegrown, and at Airport, many athletes don’t get into soccer until their middle school years,  Morris said.

That is why Morris spends a lot of time teaching fundamentals and mentally preparing his group for competition that may have more talent but less heart.

“I always tell the kids, ‘We might not be the most talented team, but if we can play with heart, we’ll have a chance,’” Morris said. “That’s what our key is. A lot of times we get out there and a team is definitely more technical than us, more tactical than us with their skills, but our kids can play with some heart and sort of even things out.”

Throughout his time as coach, Morris never left Airport for another position. He cared too much about the kids and that community to leave for anywhere else.

“It’s just almost like a family situation within the school,” Morris said. “We’ve had a lot of change over the years, but one thing that sort of stays the same is the students and the faculty are always there for each other, and it just makes for a warm place to work.”

While he won’t be coaching this year, Morris will still be in the school teaching math. He said he will be keeping an eye on his former team and offered this advice to the next coach.

“I am not a big Clemson, Dabbo Sweeney fan, but if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to put everything you’ve got into it,” Morris said. “High school coaching, unless you’re just set up with a very, very good situation, it is tough. You’ve got to build it from the foundation up, just be committed and make sure that you put everything you have into it and it’s very rewarding. It’s great to see those kids when they experience success and help them through the hard times, to see the smiles and sometimes tears of joy and also tears of losing. It’s a lot of personal relationships that you form over the years that it makes it worthwhile.”