By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Back on the mound this summer has been a good step for pitcher Wagner Morrissette.
Formerly on the 2022 state championship team for The Burlington School, Morrissette is preparing for his next stop in college baseball with Division II power Lenoir-Rhyne.
It has been quite a map of destinations to this point.
“Just getting reps again,” Morrissette said. “Getting familiar with everything after not throwing for a year. It has been a fun summer being able to get in the swing of things.”
He’s with the Oak Island Loggerheads, a collegiate summer team in the Old North State League. He’s a back-end reliever, so that keeps his number of innings low.
Lenoir-Rhyne will be yet another college program for Morrissette, a 21-year-old right-hander from Whitsett.
“The biggest thing I’ve learned now is that everything happens for a reason,” he said. “Learning while on this journey, it’s all going to work out in the end.”
Morrissette has made several stops since pitching for TBS. He appeared in three games as a freshman for Maryland in 2023, then had a heavy workload for Gaston College, a junior college power, in 2024.
From there, he committed to Iowa, where former Elon University pitching coach Sean McGrath was the pitching coach. After the 2024 season, McGrath left for Lamar, so Morrisette decided to take that route and bypass Iowa.
With a shoulder injury, he didn’t appear in a game this year for Lamar.
Morrissette is a graduate transfer at Lenoir-Rhyne, with two seasons of eligibility remaining. He has a degree in leadership studies, while he’ll aim for dual master’s degrees.
The baseball aspect could be rewarding as well. Lenoir-Rhyne reached the Division II College World Series last year, becoming one of the last four teams remaining.
“I heard some great things,” Morrissette said of the Bears. “I saw the success that they had there.”
This is another chance in a college baseball career that has been interrupted by change. But Morrissette said it has been rewarding in certain ways.
“The memories I’ve made,” he said. “Some of my closest friends have come in college baseball.”
