Ashley Morton stopped posting the hours on the door of her Mayfair boutique. There’s no point, she said. It’s impossible for the business owner to hold consistent opening times when her son is one of Philadelphia’s best high school basketball players. There always seems to be a game or tournament for the mom to attend.
“My customers say, ‘Is the store going to be open?’ I say, ‘Sorry, we got a game’,” Morton said. “So we just do pickups now. People can order online and schedule a pickup. It just became too much.”
That’s the price you pay when your son — Father Judge’s Derrick Morton-Rivera — is a win away from a second straight Catholic League boys’ basketball title.
“I’m just going to wait until everything is completely finished,” Morton said. “Then we’ll open back up.”
The mom opened Ashley’s Kloset 12 years ago after a dress she made with a Wal-Mart sewing machine and a $2 piece of fabric from Jo-Mar received attention on social media. Morton was self taught — “I went on a wing and a prayer,” she said — and figured it out. She had enough of her job at a men’s suit store and decided to do her own thing. So her mom helped her launch the business in Olney before it moved to Mayfair.
“My mom said, ‘We’re going to get you a store,’” Morton said. “Mind you, I don’t have any money. My mom doesn’t have any money. I’m like, ‘How are we going to get a store?’ Don’t you know she came up with that money and found me a store.”
She put a basketball net in the back of her store for her son, who seemed destined to be a hooper ever since he dribbled a ball when he was just 10 months old.
“My mom dropped the spaghetti,” Morton said. “She was cooking ground beef and she was like, ‘Oh my god.’ He was bouncing the ball before he could even walk. You know how they have that little wobble? The ball was bouncing while he was off and then once it stopped bouncing, he fell.”
The son is signed to play at Temple and showed why on Wednesday night when he willed Judge back from an early 16-point deficit against Archbishop Wood in the semifinals. He scored 27 points and had the 9,000 fans at the Palestra in the palm of his hand.
Morton was not trying to shape a basketball player when she opened her store. But she did show her son everyday the hard work that comes with chasing a dream. Perhaps that prepared him to chase his own.
“My mom is always working,” said Morton-Rivera. “The only time she really takes off is to see me play. Knowing how hard she works, makes me work even harder.”
The Potato State
Customers asked Morton about her shop’s hours in the summer and she said she had to first check the AAU schedule.
“I don’t have a schedule,” she said. “I just have his. This is going to be the first summer without it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.”
She traveled with her son to basketball tournaments throughout the country, crossing off states she never dreamed of visiting.
“What’s the Potato State? Idaho,” she said. “It was the most boring place ever. Even their downtown was a ghost town. But we can say we’ve been to Idaho, you know what I mean?”
Morton poured everything into her son, even the hours of her own shop. She had help, too. If Morton works late, her mother stops by to cook dinner and do the laundry.
“She even washes my clothes,” Morton said as it took a village to raise a basketball star.
Morton designs and sews all of her own women’s clothing in the ALM Collection, specializing in plus sizes and fashion for taller women. She does enough online orders — the shop ships around the world, she said — that she can close the doors to watch basketball.
Something that started on a whim has grown into a full-time operation. The mom willed her dream into existence.
“I remember one time he was like, ‘Mom, all you do is work.’ And I started crying,” Morton said. “Because he doesn’t know what I’m working for. Every time he turned the light on, the light came on. Anything he asked for, I was able to provide. He’s like, ‘Alls I see is the back of your head because you’re just sewing all the time.’ I said, ‘Mir, you have to understand.’ Now, I think he gets it.”
‘Mom, just calm down’
The crowd at the Palestra roared as Judge mounted its comeback on Wednesday. And the fans will be even louder on Sunday when Judge plays Neumann Goretti. But Morton-Rivera, whose father, D.J. Rivera, won a Catholic League title at Neumann Goretti, plays like he can’t hear anything. He handles the frenzy of a sold-out arena the same way he does when Chick-fil-A forgets his sauce.
“I’m like, ‘They forgot the sauce,’” Morton said. “And he’s like, ‘Mom, just calm down. Relax. Ask her for it.’ He calms me down. He inspires me to have patience, be humble, and just breathe.”
The kid who watched his mom spend hours behind the sewing machine seems just as fixated on the basketball court. He followed his dad to gyms as a kid and always found time to work on his shot.
Judge’s coaches organized a practice Friday afternoon but that wasn’t enough for Morton-Rivera, who stayed in the gym with a few teammates for another 90 minutes. Like mom, he’s always working.
“It’s just about ‘How bad do you want it?,’” he said. “We have a lot of guys on our team who want it. Even if they’re tired, they’ll stay after practice to get their shots up. Those are the little things that show when the game starts.”
His mom signed him up to play when he was 3 years old as he was tall enough to play with the 6-year-old kids at the Lawncrest Rec Center. They told the parents to make sure their kids came with a drink. So Morton sent her son with a Capri Sun pouch.
“We didn’t know,” she said.
The mom figured it out. It was the start of her son’s basketball journey, one that felt so rapid as he started to dunk as a teenager and played in the Potato State. And now he has a residency at The Palestra with a college scholarship secured.
“My sister was like, ‘Ash, that’s really your son,’” Morton said. “And I say, ‘Yes, it is.’ It’s just been so amazing. I’m so proud of him.”
Judge’s basketball season could extend another month if it marches deep into the state playoffs. Until it’s finished, Morton’s business will be online only.
“I’m getting my inventory ready to be fully stocked,” Morton said.
