The Riverside Press-Enterprise
AT A HIGHER LEVEL
Junior point guard Morris has Etiwanda playing for a CIF-SS title for third consecutive year
A friendship that predated high school has sped up the trajectory of the Etiwanda girls basketball program.
Kennedy Smith encouraged Aliyahna “Puff” Morris to join her at Etiwanda in the fall of 2021 and now the Eagles are playing in their third straight CIF Southern Section Open Division championship game.
And for the third straight year, the Eagles will be facing Sierra Canyon. The game is today at 6 p.m. at Cal Baptist University.
“It’s always fun playing against them and going against their fans,” said Morris, a 5-foot-5 junior guard. “We’ve been going back and forth and want to do it this year because it’s Kennedy’s senior year.”
Her family did not have a long history of playing basketball, but she took to it at an early age.
“I started playing at 4,” she said. “The first year. I was playing with boys and they wouldn’t pass the ball because I was a girl. I don’t know if I was good. I remember liking it. I was so excited for the games, I’d wear my uniform to school.”
Soon after, she started realizing she was good. Her mother lied about her age — at the age of 8 — so she could play with 9-year-olds and get more of a challenge. When she was going toe-to-toe with the boys at that age, she realized she was good.
She said she met Smith around the fifth grade when they were first playing for the same AAU team, Cal Sparks.
Smith, a senior, who was named a Mcdonald’s All-american this year, came to Etiwanda first and immediately encouraged Morris to join her.
“She was telling me, ‘I’m going to Etiwanda, you can come here and play with me,’” Morris recalls. “I didn’t know anything about it (the program). I didn’t know coach Stan (Delus).”
Smith knew Morris could help the team immediately.
“Even though Puff was coming in as a freshman I saw a lot of potential just from playing with (her),” Smith wrote via text. “She had a big role playing pg (point guard) and controlling our offense on such a high caliber team as a freshman.”