Athlete of the Week: Kadinn Morris

WAND Sports introduces a brand new segment, Athlete of the Week presented by Midwest Technical Institute!

Each week, sports director Gordon Voit, Mark Pearson and Orlando Toatley put the spotlight on a local high school athlete who is excelling as a student and community member as well!

To submit a student-athlete's name, please send a detailed list of his/her accolades to Gordon Voit on Facebook or via email at Gordon.Voit@wandtv.com.

KADINN MORRIS (SHG FOOTBALL)

Kadinn Morris is a football coach's dream, and not just because of his bear paw-sized mitts, strength or 40-yard-dash time. Western Michigan is getting a special young man.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pound tight end is a Louisiana-raised, high-character young man trained in the Southern tradition of "Yes, sir. No, sir." But it was actually a recent message to me that further proved what I already knew to be true: he gets that character counts.

We live in an era of chest-puffing and exaggeration. I will never know how many times coaches, parents or athletes have rounded their numbers up or even purely fabricated them. It's probably an alarmingly big number. But the 17-year-old Morris went out of his way to essentially do the opposite: to clarify a situation and make sure that a number was actually lower than I initially thought it was.

Some background: Morris transferred to SHG (which uses a 4.0 scale) from Maroa-Forsyth (5.0 scale) and unwittingly gave me his 5.0 scale number, which is a 4.2. When he got home from our interview he must've realized what he did because I got a message explaining that it was actually a 3.2 out of 4.0 and that he had switched scales.

I would have never known that the 4.2 number was out of a different scale than 4.0. It would have been convenient to just let the miscommunication slide and go with the number he had given me. A bigger number. A number that makes him look better. But he went out of his way to make sure I knew the real, true number regardless of what that meant when this article was typed up for all to see.

That's character.

Kadinn Morris, a true leader in the community who is primed for a big senior season on the football field and more importantly, another year of leading by example.

Week 1: Jeffery Wells (MacArthur football)

Week 2: Jackson Hogan (St. Teresa football)

Week 3: Markesha Jackson (Eisenhower basketball/track)

Week 4: Jeske Maples (Central A&M football)

Week 5: Aiden Seider (Eisenhower football)

Week 6: Kate Jeffers (Okaw Valley volleyball)

Week 7: Edgar Onate (St. Teresa soccer)

Week 8: Grant Ripperda (Wiliamsville football)

Week 9: Wade Jostes (Maroa-Forsyth football)

Week 10: Sage Davis (Mt. Zion football)

Week 11: Jonah Lauff (Pana football)

Week 12: Brittney Oakley (Warrensburg-Latham track & field)