Morgan Barwick has been watching a particular group of young people for about a decade now. She met them when they were eight years old playing rec soccer alongside her oldest son, just when many of them were also starting out with Impact FC, a small regional travel soccer club that she eventually became involved with and took on as director.Those kids are all in high school now, and last fall ten of the eleven starters on Litchfield's varsity boys soccer team came from that small club in some form. They were the SCC Conference champions for the fall 2025 season, and the stands were packed in support of their efforts.

"It's been really cool for me to kind of just see it come full circle," she said.

Those young men didn't just show up better at soccer. They were dedicated to the sport and spent years learning the skills of the game through rec program opportunities, the high school team, and club play with Impact FC.  The best part, though? They volunteer at youth camps now. They run summer clinics. Younger kids like Morgan's daughter, Isla, 9, know them by name and jump at the chance to train with them. What started as a -small travel soccer organization has become a pipeline of athletes, mentors, and community connectors.

That's the thing Morgan is really advocating for — not sports specifically, but the mechanism. Something a kid cares enough about that the rest of life gets organized around it and motivates their success. "If they don't want to go to school today — which isn't a lot — but if they don't, it's like well, then you've got to miss volleyball tonight. Band, choir, art, pickleball at the park, Lego club at the library. It doesn't have to be athletics. It just has to be something.”

A lifelong Litchfield resident and Class of 2005 alumna, Morgan graduated from Blackburn College on a full scholarship, earned her master's from Eastern New Mexico University online, and now works remotely in software and accounting support. That flexibility keeps her deeply present in her kids' lives — three of them, spanning the whole district. Lydon, her stepson and a graduating senior, spent his K-8 years in Litchfield before transferring to Mater Dei. He's been exploring trade school options with an interest in electrical work, and now plans to attend Kaskaskia community college then join the Illinois State Police — following the path of his father, Cody, who is a state trooper. It's a non-traditional route, built on trades exposure and civic purpose. It is, in miniature, the kind of pathway Morgan showed up to the planning committee to protect.

Her daughters, Allison and Isla, are fully immersed in Litchfield schools and also play soccer for Impact FC. Allison, now a fifth grader, won the whole-school spelling bee last year. She is looking forward to learning to play the clarinet and joining chorus next year.  Isla, currently in third grade, is an extrovert and enjoys helping her peers and teachers in any way she can. She also participates in several extracurricular and athletic programs within the community.. Both girls love sports, love school, and love being involved.

When Dr. McClain’s's office reached out to ask if Morgan would join the Community Planning Committee, she didn't need convincing. "I kind of jumped at the chance to have a say, and be heard on behalf of my kids and their friends." Having children at essentially every phase — one who has moved through it entirely, one mid-elementary, one just starting — she had a broad view.

What she brought into those meetings was the conviction that community doesn't happen behind school walls. "It's not just the school. It's involving the parents, the community, and just creating that culture." It's the Friday night football games. The packed stands at a sectional soccer final. The girls who start playing basketball together in fourth grade and, in a town like this, may still be playing together ten years later.

Litchfield sits inside an easy drive of Edwardsville, Springfield, and St. Louis, while also sitting beside Lake Lou, within range of Hillsboro's Fusion pool, and at the center of a regional network of youth sports and community activities. It's a small place with a long reach. What the planning committee is working on, Morgan believes, is making sure that reach extends to every kid who walks through the district's doors — not just the ones headed to four-year universities, but the ones building careers by other routes, finding their people through soccer or spelling bees or something no one has named yet.