It isn’t every day that a 29 year-old long jump school record is broken at an after school dual meet on a first attempt, but Morgan Duff ’26 isn’t your everyday athlete. As one of her many athletic accomplishments from this year, on April 28 at the Utica Ford High School long jump pit, South’s longest standing girls track and field record fell when Duff jumped 17 feet, 10 inches.
“Honestly, I didn’t really expect it, especially because it was an away meet and it was just a dual meet, so it didn’t really feel like it was that big,” Duff said. “There wasn’t really much of our team around and then everyone was congratulating me and I was like, ‘thank you,’ and it just didn’t really feel real. I don’t know, I’m still kind of processing it.”
Beyond being a four-year varsity track athlete, Duff has also played varsity volleyball and basketball at South, first joining the sports after being inspired by her older sister.
“I just kind of copied her,” Duff said. “She played lacrosse, volleyball and basketball. I just copied it. I played all those sports because I wanted to be like her.”
In the 2025-26 season, Duff helped lead the girls’ basketball team on a district title run that ended with a 42-37 win over Detroit Martin Luther King in the championship game. However, the defining moment of the season for Duff came one game earlier against Detroit Cass Tech.
“The district game was great, but the semifinals when we beat Cass, who we lost to the past two years in the district finals, that was huge,” Duff said. “When the final buzzer rang and we won, we were all just kind of like, ‘oh,’ because we didn’t really know if we were going to be able to.”
Despite her success in basketball, ending the season as the Most Valuable Offense, the John Thursby Award and first-team All-MAC Red, Duff said her experience in sports hasn’t come without its struggles.
“I almost quit basketball this year because I was just really done, but my teammates are the reason I stayed and I just felt like I couldn’t let them down,” Duff said. “I stayed for them and they are probably the reason I keep doing my sports.”
Even through these difficult stretches, Duff said she tries to focus on effort, mentality and bringing the most she can to games and meets.
“I just do the best I can,” Duff said. “I mean, I might not be amazing. There were a lot of games in basketball where we did pretty bad and I feel like I kind of take responsibility for that because I was point guard. But I think just playing the best I can and putting everything else aside, especially if I have a really bad day, I just do one thing at a time and try to give 100 percent when I’m there.”
