Southeast Missourian girls basketball Player of the Year: There's no stopping Josie Long

Saxony Lutheran coach Sam Sides outlined the strategic key to defeating the Woodland girls basketball team two years ago.

"We played them four times, so I know their players pretty good," Sides said after a 49-35 victory over the Cardinals in the Class 3 District 1 semifinals in 2012. "We was trying to keep the ball out of [Josie] Long's hands as much as possible. We tried to make the other girls beat us a little bit. I think we forced them to do something they're not used to doing. We changed their roles a little bit. I think that caused them some problems."

In other words, beating the Cardinals was a matter of playing a successful game of keep away with the then-sophomore Long.

"Well, that was his main focus, to keep it away from me ... He did pretty good at that, too," Long said.

Saxony Lutheran, a balanced and deep squad that played deep into the Class 3 playoffs this year, used the strategy to defeat Woodland twice this season, once holding Long to a season-low nine points.

Other teams tried that strategy, too, but with not nearly the success.

Long finished her senior season averaging nearly a triple-double with 26.2 points per game, 11.2 rebounds and 9.4 steals. She also averaged 4.0 assists and 1.2 blocks.

The total body of work in the Cardinals' 17-6 season made her the Southeast Missourian Player of the Year.

"She's part of the best four years of Woodland lady basketball we ever had," Cardinals second-year coach Robert Stein said.

The four-year span included the Cardinals reaching the district championship game her freshman year in a 16-8 season. Woodland set a school record for wins with 17 her sophomore year, then topped that with 18 wins her junior season. An experienced Cardinals team collected 17 wins in an ice-plagued season this year with four senior starters and a fifth senior coming off the bench.

Long was the pillar of those accomplishments, averaging double figures in scoring and rebounding all four years. She earned all-district distinction each season. She made Class 3 all-state second team as a junior after averaging 21.3 points and was upgraded to first team this year.

"Josie, she's special," Stein said. "She's probably a once-in-a-generation type athlete for us. She works hard on anything I tell her she needs to work on. She never gets down and never quits."

She became the founding member of the Woodland girls' 1,000-point club as a junior and went over the 1,500-point mark as senior, closing her high school career with nearly 1,700 points.

All this despite the game of keep-the-ball-away from Josie.

"We played games where they tripled her and doubled her and just dared other kids to shoot and let them beat them," Stein said. "A lot of times, invariably, until she kind of got in the rhythm, even when it wasn't in scoring, just got calmed down and relaxed, our team took on a whole a lot of their personality and attitude from her and [fellow senior] Kathyln Cooper."

Long, with quickness not common to a 5-foot-9 girl, can make her presence felt in multitude ways. Her ball-handling and shooting accuracy are at guard standards, but she can also hit shots from mid-range and has the quickness and strength to maneuver on the interior.

The combination of athletic skills, which also made her a standout player in volleyball and softball, have made her a marked girl.

"It's been like that since freshman year, and it's gotten harder -- I'm getting double and triple-teamed sometimes," Long said. "But then I have to rely on my other teammates ... it's gotten to be challenging."

The basic strategy was to try to make Long give up the ball, then make it as difficult as possible to get the ball back in her hands.

The plight of the Cardinals boiled down to how well opponents could play keep-away with Long.

"Teams that were able to do that and were successful doing that, we struggled with, and teams that weren't, we had our way with," Stein said.

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Woodland’s Josie Long shoots against Oran’s Ashlyn McIntosh during the championship game of the Lady Devils Invitational on Dec. 14 in Chaffee, Missouri. Long averaged almost a triple-double during her senior year. (Fred Lynch)

Long comes from an athletic lineage and an environment that honed her talents.

Her grandfather, Kenny Holzum, was a high school basketball star at Leopold High School, where he graduated in 1967.

"He could dunk it and all that kinds of stuff. He was good," said Laurie Long, Holzum's daughter and Josie's mother, who played volleyball and basketball at Woodland. "I think she took more after him than me, by all means."

Laurie earned all-district honors in basketball her final two years at Woodland.

"My grandpa said she was a pretty big stud," Josie said about her mom.

Laurie, who graduated from Woodland in 1991, married D.J. Long after high school and the couple had three children -- with 18-year-old Josie book ended by brothers, 22-year-old Jesse and 16-year-old Jake, a sophomore.

The lineage and positioning of Josie in the family left her with a somewhat predictable destiny.

"When she was 5, I wrote in her baby book, 'You play ball like a 12-year-old,'" Laurie said. "I'll never forget, it was so funny."

Older brother Jesse was more like his father, tall and quick afoot but gravitating toward baseball. Josie was more like her mother with a love for basketball.

D.J. brought the basketball hoop from his youth to the family's rural property, with a dirt surface serving as the court for years until being covered by concrete within the last couple of years.

"Ever since she was little bitty she just shot around," Laurie said. "If we weren't out there shooting with her, she was out there shooting by herself."

Younger brother Jake came in handy.

"She kind of made her little brother do whatever she wanted. 'Come on out, we're going to play.' And then he picked up on it, and now he loves it as much as she does," Laurie said.

Going against Jake, who now is 6-foot, has gotten more challenging over the years.

"We usually play games of H.O.R.S.E and stuff, one and one, and see who can make the best shot," Josie said. "He's big on doing all this fancy stuff, and I just shoot around.

"It's a big difference and helps me improve a lot, because you don't play .... girls aren't like guys ... they aren't as quick and can't jump as high, so I see him as a bigger challenge than anybody else," Josie said.

The shoot-a-rounds with mom, dad, grandpa and brothers continue to this day.

"We just all jump in and play," Josie said.

But Laurie notes a competitive level in Josie that she never possessed.

"That comes from somewhere else," Laurie said. "My boys, I think a lot of it came from being with them and working harder. They're pretty close, and they'd try to make each other better. I almost wish she could play baseball; she'd probably be a heck of a pitcher."

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2014 All-Missourian girls basketball - Josie Long - Woodland High School (Laura Simon)

The results are more apparent in an official environment.

Josie scored 41 of her team's 62 points in a 62-26 win over Egyptian (Ill.) in a December game that ran the Cardinals' record to 6-0 at the time.

The perfect start included Woodland's first championship ever in Chaffee's Lady Red Devil Invitational.

She scored 30 or more points in six other games, while other notable performances included a 29-point, 21-rebound effort in a 58-44 win over Perryville in late January.

February brought a game-tying basket at the buzzer in regulation play against Greenville, then the winning basket at the buzzer in overtime after the Bears moved ahead 62-61 with 7 seconds left. That game stuck with Stein.

"That's just kind of the kid she is," Stein said. "She just never gave up, never quit and never mattered what the score was, and sometimes really, really good things happen when you do that."

Other games weren't as intense -- Josie was.

Stein once had to remove her after she made 17 steals -- in the first 2 1/2 minutes of a game.

"I felt bad for her because her year kind of went that way," Stein said. "Sometimes we played some teams that were so bad that she completely, totally dominated."

Her final high school game demonstrated her vital nature to the Cardinals.

In the first round of district play Stein said the Cardinals led 19-7 when Long got into foul problems in the second quarter.

"She picked up third foul with about 1:40 left in the second quarter," Stein said. "We had to set her down on the bench and we were down 25-19 at the half."

It was the second straight year St. Pius ended the Cardinals' season in district play. Her sophomore year ended with the district semifinal loss to Saxony, and she never got the chance to play in a district final after facing Scott City as a freshman.

"It got to me a lot, but it made me want to come back each year and get better and better," Long said about the district losses. "Unfortunately we had to go up against Saxony, and they've gotten real strong."

Her team and personal fortunes followed a path similar to that of her mom.

"I was like Josie -- my passion was basketball," Laurie said. "I won a lot of personal awards. I don't think as a team we really went very far. We always got shut down by them hard teams -- the Bernies, the Dexters, the Leopolds -- the ones that were strong for years."

Josie did help Woodland track down a district title in volleyball last fall, the school's first since 1999, but it only wetted her appetite for more.

"Going to the championship in volleyball, and winning, that made me go into basketball with a different view of the game and focus on districts and getting to the championships, because that's what I wanted -- another championship under my belt," Josie said.

That didn't happen.

On the upside, Josie's basketball career is not over.

She signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Mineral Area College next season.

"It doesn't surprise me," Laurie said about the scholarship. "It just makes me so happy that her goal and dream are continuing, and that she's close to home."

Stein knows what Mineral Area is getting: a driven player, a humble athlete and a leader who will occasionally speak up but mainly lead by example.

"She's a better person than she is an athlete," Stein said. "That just says something about the kind of person she is. It would be real easy for her, as athletic as she is, to try and be a bully, and she doesn't do that. I've seen her many, many times try to help kids that aren't as good as her do things better or tell them to keep their head up -- if they keep working they'll get better.

"She's a special kid and a special player."