Senior Feature: Ian Morris is ready to tear it up on the field and in the classroom at MIT

Ian Morris playing nose guard for Park City High School. Photo: Kerri-Lynn Morris.

PARK CITY, Utah – With the conclusion of the 2022 school year, the graduating class of seniors is preparing to advance to the next stage of their lives, and for many, that will include working towards a college degree. For Park City High’s Ian Morris, he will continue his student-athlete responsibilities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Engineers football team.

“It’s been a goal of mine for a long time…I mean, honestly I’m just super glad to have the opportunity to go there and it’s the culmination of a lot of work. It’s one of those things where you really just have to go in day in and day out, and do the work. Get smarter as it were for this and keep practicing with all that,” Morris said.

While earning a football scholarship is no small feat, playing for the Engineers is unlike any other school. Just like every other student at MIT, the student athletes also have to prove themselves academically in addition to their sport of choice. For Morris, this meant he would need to not only be at the top of his class, but would have to participate in extracurriculars and give back to the community.

“[You need] a very high GPA, taking competitive classes, probably top ten percent or top five percent in your class. Balanced extracurriculars, and ensuring that you’re actually returning to the community because the thing with MIT specifically, is that they get a lot of guys who are incredibly intelligent, but don’t do anything outside of school when applying there. So they really want to make sure that you actually do stuff for the community in terms of building it up instead of just doing school and nothing else,” Morris said.

So on top of performing on the field, Morris took all these requirements to heart and truly exceeded expectations. In addition to a 4.6 GPA, which primarily includes difficult AP courses, Morris also scored a 1550 (out of 1600) on the SAT, provided volunteer work, peer tutoring, and worked with other youth in the community.

As for his football career, Morris played pretty much everywhere on Park City’s offensive and defensive lines, from center, to right tackle and even nose guard. He demonstrated a lot of versatility which has him in a good spot as he prepares to join the Engineers program.

In addition to his stellar football performances, Morris is also an elite powerlifter, recently breaking three IPL World Junior Powerlifting records for his weight class at the 2022 U.S. Powerlifting Association National Championships in Atlanta, GA.

At the competition, Morris squatted 694 pounds in the 275-pound weight class at the USPA sanctioned event to set the new all-time world junior squat record, while also breaking his own record of 683 pounds set in June of 2021. Ian then benched 363 pounds to set the world record in that category, 15 pounds more than the previous record.  While Ian’s deadlift of 585 pounds was not record-breaking, it added to his squat-bench-deadlift total of 1642 pounds, which set a new combined world record and beat the previous record by 54 pounds.

Overall, this highly talented young man is destined for greatness at his new home in Cambridge, MA. With an impressive performance in both academics and athletics, Morris is certainly a pure combination of brains and brawn who wants to continue excelling on the field and in the classroom.

“I really like the culture of the football team,” Morris said. “They play very, very hard and just generally are super aggressive off the ball and that’s what I was looking for. Even though it’s a high academic school, I don’t want to be on a football team that just doesn’t do stuff right. I want to be on a football team that wants to win.”