Her playing days may be over, but former Marist women’s basketball guard Sydney Coffey continues to make waves in the basketball world with her fashion brand, Morlé.
Coffey comes from a basketball family; her brother Amir just wrapped up his fifth season as a Los Angeles Clipper, her father Richard played in the NBA and her sister Nia was the fifth overall pick in the 2017 WNBA Draft and is preparing for her seventh season with the Atlanta Dream. Sydney Coffey has used her basketball connections to promote the Morlé’s brand, which specifically markets its clothing for tall women.
Morlé, short for “more legs,” was created by Coffey after she struggled to find high-quality clothing due to her height.
“The idea kind of hit me that the way I can get involved in fashion is to create clothing for tall women because it’s such an untapped market,” said Coffey.
The idea itself originated in 2018 while Coffey was playing basketball professionally in Finland; Coffey and her teammates would regularly talk about their struggles in finding pants that fit them correctly. Now in 2024, Morlé debuted at the Women’s Final Four Tip-Off Fashion Show in Cleveland.
“Honestly, there was no better way than to have my first fashion show there because it’s all women and a lot of them are tall, so that’s Morlé’s demographic,” said Coffey.
The meteoric rise of women’s college basketball also benefited Coffey, with more people than ever before watching the Final Four, coinciding with record-setting attendance at the three games in Cleveland. With more eyes on the event, Coffey used the opportunity to network and earn Morlé further exposure.
“I met so many women that said ‘I didn’t know this existed’, things like that,” said Coffey. “It’s super important to have a community that’s lacking something and to be a solution.”
Within the WNBA, fashion has recently become a more prominent and publicized aspect of the league, with many players having their own personal stylists. At the WNBA Draft on April 15, soon-to-be draftees hit the red carpet representing big-name designers, such as Caitlin Clark wearing a full-Prada look. In total, viewership peaked at 3.09 million when the Indiana Fever selected Clark first overall, smashing the previous record of 601k in 2004.
This presents an opportunity for Coffey, through both her sister and other friends in the WNBA, to spread Morlé’s reach. Morlé’s market extends not just to other players, but to fans monitoring what each player is wearing before and after games.
Coffey remained focused on her basketball career growing up, but still had a strong passion for fashion from a young age. Playing at the prolific Hopkins High School in Minnesota, the same school that current college basketball superstar Paige Bueckers attended, Coffey garnered interest from colleges around the country.
However, she began her college search before she started to receive collegiate offers for basketball. Coffey became interested in Marist thanks to their fashion program’s strong reputation, and unbeknownst to anyone on the women’s basketball coaching staff, toured the school as any other high school student would.
Knowing Marist was where she ultimately wanted to end up, Coffey’s coach at Hopkins High School continuously called former Marist head coach, Brian Giorgis, attempting to garner interest in her from the Red Fox staff. Eventually, after reaching out to then assistant coach and current head coach Erin Doughty, Coffey finally got her chance.
“I went out and watched her and came back and told coach Giorgis that she could really be good for us,” said Doughty.
At the end of her first official visit, Giorgis began to officially extend an offer to Coffey, but before he could even finish the sentence, she had already accepted it.
“I wish all recruits were that easy,” said Giorgis.
“She’s like the only high school kid who’s ever done that,” Doughty added.
Coffey attributes much of her current success in the fashion industry to her time at Marist, where she learned the building blocks of what must go into a growing business. Coffey was interested in focusing on fashion design but feared it would interfere with her already hectic basketball schedule.
“I went with the business side, so the merchandising side, which in hindsight, worked out much better for me,” said Coffey.
Outside of the classroom, Coffey made an immediate impact on the court as a freshman for the Red Foxes averaging 7.3 points per game as a stout defender who regularly guarded the opposing team’s top scoring option. This included guarding reigning Ivy League Player of the Year (POTY) Niveen Rasheed in her third game of the year against the defending Ivy League Champion Princeton Tigers.
With Coffey as the primary defender, Rasheed only scored seven points on 3/17 shooting from the field en route to a 56-45 Marist win at McCann Arena, with Coffey scoring 13 points. Rasheed scored in double figures in every other regular season game of the season on her way to a second consecutive POTY award.
“The home games were insane back when I was playing,” said Coffey. “The gym would be completely filled from top to bottom. It was such an exciting environment to play in… it would literally be insane.”
Coffey remained a trustworthy presence off of the bench until the 2013 MAAC Championship Game.
“The night before the MAAC Championship, the coaches were talking about what to do and we all just said ‘I think we need to start Sydney’,” said Doughty.
The decision paid dividends; Coffey scored 12 points and recorded five assists, six rebounds and three steals, helping Marist to win the MAAC conference and advance to the NCAA Tournament. Coffey built on her MAAC All-Freshman campaign with another strong season in her sophomore year, once again highlighted by her performance at the MAAC Tournament.
In three games, Coffey averaged nearly 19 points to help Marist win their ninth consecutive MAAC Championship. In the title game, she scored 16 of her 23 points in the second half to clinch Marist’s four-point victory over the Quinnipiac Bobcats.
The 2014 title marked the end to Marist’s near decade-long reign over the MAAC, but Coffey remained a top player in the conference, garnering selections to the All-MAAC First Team in her junior and senior seasons.
“She stepped up as an upperclassman and knew she had to be more assertive,” said Doughty.
Ahead of her senior season, four members of the team transferred which, at the time before the transfer portal underwent recent rule changes to make transferring more common, was extremely rare.
“She was just like ‘If you don’t want to be here, don’t be here’ and she showed the younger players on our team how we work and how we go about our business,” said Doughty. “She really took to heart that she was someone who stayed here and she wanted to leave her mark in terms of the players that would be here when she left.”
During her senior season, Coffey logged the most minutes per game on the team at 33.9, led the team in assists and steals and finished second in points per game with 15.4, second to her fellow senior, center Tori Jarosz.
The end of Coffey’s time at Marist was not the end of her basketball career, or her time as a teammate of the aforementioned Jarosz. Coffey started her professional career overseas in Australia as a member of the Ringwood Hawks of the NBL1. At the same time, Jarosz was weighing offers from other overseas squads, and the Hawks were in the market for a center.
Coffey mentioned the idea of reuniting with Jarosz to her coaches, and after some persuading, was able to convince Jarosz to join her in Australia. The two Red Foxes effectively ran the Ringwood offense; in their 21 games played together, Coffey and Jarosz led the team in scoring.
“I absolutely loved Australia, it was a great way to ease into overseas basketball just because they speak the same language, the cuisine is quite similar and the icing on top was I got to play with [Jarosz],” said Coffey.
Coffey spent the following season in Finland, playing for Vimpelin Veto, a much different experience than her time in Australia. The league, the Finnish Women’s Basketball League (Korisliiga), was much more serious than the NBL1 in Australia and featured two-a-day practices that were extremely intense.
“[Vimpeli] was a very small close knit town, everybody knew everybody, so the fan and support system was awesome because they were very invested,” said Coffey.
Coffey played 30 games in Finland, averaging 15.1 points per game before calling it a career and focusing on building Morlé. This year, Morlé has been featured in pop-up shops for the first time, and Coffey anticipates more appearances in the coming months. With each pop-up shop being in a different state, including Texas, Arizona, California, New York and Georgia, it has allowed Morlé to grow throughout different parts of the country.
Coffey also hopes to make Morlé a fixture in more permanent stores, big and small.
“The goal over the next year is to get Morlé into boutique shops so that customers can shop Morlé in person,” said Coffey. “That’s going to help with building credibility and building that brand awareness.”
From there, the goal is to expand into big box retailers, such as Bloomingdale’s or Burlington. Though the fashion industry presents many challenges before a business can make it big, Coffey’s learning experiences at Marist and connections made through basketball have her well-prepared for the future.
“I think she is a great example of someone who found a fit, a place that had a program she wanted, a place that had an opportunity for her to make an impact on the basketball court,” said Doughty. “She took advantage of it and was able to find success both on the court and in the classroom and that has translated to her professional life as well.”
Edited by Luke Sassa
Photos from Sydney Coffey
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