It ws the winter of 1965 when a tall, dark-haired girl from Whitten, Ia., began a high school basketball career that may never be matched.
As a freshman at Union-Whitten High School, Denise Long scored 920 points, and that was just the beginning. For three seasons thereafter, the 5-foot 11-inch brunette dominated the state scene as no other player ever has. She scored 1,388 points as a sophomore, added 1,946 as a junior, then averaged an all-time record 68.5 points and totaled 1,986 -- both still national marks -- as a senior to wind up with 6,250 for a four-year career.
<TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=5 width=150 align=right bgColor=#ffcc99 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=150><CENTER>
Denise Long</CENTER></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Since then her life has been filled with both highs and lows. Today, at age 31, Denise Long-Andre becomes the 100th person and only the fifth woman to be elected to The Sunday Register's Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.
There were many highlights in Long's prep career -- a 111-point performance against Dows in 1968, a state championship the same year in which she scored a state-tournament record 93 points in the first round against Bennett, a record 282 points in four games and a dramatic 113-107 overtime championship victory over Everly and Jeanette Olson, a game that ranks as the state's most memorable title contest.
When she graduated a year later, her name had been spread across the country.
She was the first woman ever drafted by the National Basketball Association -- in the eighth round by Franklin Mieuli, then the owner of the San Francisco Warriors -- and immediately was besieged by national television celebrities, including Johnny Carson.
"Even before I was drafted, I was fatigued with basketball," Denise recalls. "I was tired of it. For years I'd been practicing four hours a day ... striving to be the best.
"But when I was drafted and sought by Johnny Carson, I told myself I couldn't turn this down and decided to go to San Francisco even though I wasn't really interested in playing."
DENISE WAS 19 then, and she had been playing basketball for a long time. At age 12, she made a pact with herself to try to be the best. For four hours a day, regardless of the weather, she would work out in a park that now is appropriately called "Denise Long Park."
Her long hours of practice came partly because of two older sisters, Diane and Dana, who had seen their dreams of reaching the state tournament turned aside.
"Dana was very good," Denise says, "but three years in a row they were beaten in the district finals."
Denise, of course, never got a chance to play with the Warriors, and Mieuli's attempt at a professional women's league never got off the ground.
"We played games prior to the Warriors' contests," she said, "and no one ever really got a salary. There was a lot of talk then about introducing women's basketball to the 1972 Olympics and Mieuli used that as an excuse for not paying salaries for playing basketball. But, I really don't think there were too many players who would have had a chance to make the Olympic team."
While in California, Denise attended the University of San Francisco for a while and admits she found herself out of place.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=150 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width=150>
Register File Photo</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=150>Denise Long puts up a shot as a member of the Union-Whitten girls' basketball team. <HR noShade></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>"It was a culture shock," is the way she describes the experience. "I never knew what gay people were then and I was repulsed by homosexual marches, women burning bras and things like that. At school, my humor didn't relate to theirs, but I learned a lot."
Mieuli's league didn't last long and Denise was back in Iowa the following year, attending the University of Northern Iowa.
IT WAS THERE that she finally realized just how familiar her name had become when she was a high school basketball star.
"I wasn't aware of the splash I'd made as a basketball player," Denise says. "I was getting up to five or six obscene phone calls a night and I couldn't cope with it. My only source of strength was post cards from my dad, and he'd come up once a week for pizza."
Denise dropped out of UNI later, attended Marshalltown Community College for a year, then returned to UNI at the urging of her father.
In the meantime, she turned to a spiritual life.
"I was at Marshalltown Community College in the fall of 1971," she relates, "and one night when I came home, I saw a paper sticking out of my mother's Bible. On an impulse I grabbed it, took it into bed and read it."
Denise can still recall the scriptures she read that night, and they've had a lasting impression.
She was back at UNI the following year. After seeing a sign that read "Campus Bible Fellowship," on an impulse she started attending meetings of the group.
"That's when I took Christ as my savior," Denise says. "I soon lost interest in physical education, I only wanted to study the Bible and I transferred to Faith Baptist Bible College at Ankeny."
It was there she met Dave Sturdy, the son of a pastor. It was a typical love story, boy meets girl, etc., and the two were married.
"We were married for 41/2 years," recalls Denise, "and when we were finally divorced I grieved for a year. I just couldn't believe that two people committed toward God couldn't work things out. But, I guess we were different. I couldn't get enough knowledge of the Bible and God, and Dave was sick of it. It had been forced upon him by his father. But, in my heart, I always thought he'd come back to me."
It was while Denise was working at Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Des Moines that she met her present husband, Lee Andre.
"I was coming down the elevator one day and Lee was on it," said Denise. "As I got off he said, 'Pray for Poland,' and I said 'Are you a Christian?' and he answered, 'Yes I am.'"
The two started seeing one another and were married last June 27. They now live in a remote area southwest of Osceola, with Lee's son by a previous marriage.
DENISE'S BASKETBALL career didn't end with Mieuli's San Francisco folly. She played on a United States amateur team that toured the Orient in 1973, playing 22 games in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines and Hong Kong.
"We lost all eight in Korea," she recalls, "but won 10 others."
And then, in 1979, when the professional Iowa Cornets were seeking to stay financially solvent, Denise got a call from owner-coach Rod Lein, an old friend.
"Rod thought that my name might bring in a few people," says Denise, "but there I was, an old out-of-condition athlete sitting on the bench.
"We were playing one night at the Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids and all of a sudden one fan started chanting, 'Put in Denise.' Then, from the other side, someone yelled, 'Put in Long.' Before long the entire crowd was yelling and I couldn't believe it. Finally Rod turned to me and said, 'I'm going to have to put you in or get lynched.'
"I'll never forget that they gave me a standing ovation, even though Cedar Rapids didn't have high school ball when I played. Then the first thing I did was commit a foul. I've always said that a person is remembered by her last game. My total contribution to that pro league was one point and 40 seconds of playing time."
That standing ovation is something Denise will always remember. She also has a number of other memories she'll cherish forever.
But perhaps a couple aren't the type you'd expect.
"Sure, I remember when I got 93 points against Bennett," she recalls, "but just getting to the state tournament that year (1968) was more memorable and winning the championship was just the icing on the cake.
"If there's one game that I really think I played to my potential, it was against Hubbard in my senior year. I scored something like 80 points. But it was one of those nights where I'd take two dribbles, shoot and make it. I remember Les Heuser (the Hubbard coach) coming up after the game and saying, 'Am I glad you're finally going to graduate.'"
Then, too, there was the state tournament of 1969, Denise's senior year, when Union-Whitten, the defending champion, was beaten by Allison-Bristow in the semifinals, then dropped an 89-86 decision to Woodbine in the consolation game.
"I was really feeling bad," Denise remembers, "and I couldn't believe it that all these people kept coming up and asking for autographs. They were wonderful.
"You know," she continued, "I don't think I ever played one of my best games in the state tournament -- especially that one against Everly in the 1968 championship. I was more deliberate, more controlled in that one and that wasn't my style."
LONG-ANDRE hsn't lost all of her enthusiasm for girls' basketball.
For a number of years, she worked as a color commentator for the Iowa Radio Network at state tournaments, and says she followed the Ankeny to the state meet when she was attending Faith Baptist Bible College.
"The past two years, I've also watched the finals on television," she said.
"I've got one semester left toward a phyiscal education degree at Simpson College and I'd be foolish not to go back and get it," she added. "I'd love to coach and work basketball camps if I could give personal attention and care for the girls.
"I'm also planning on writing a book. I've got the title picked out (To Make a Long Story Short) and I've got one chapter completed. It's a Tom Sawyerish story about what it's like for a small-town girl, whose environment is nothing but basketball."
Long-Andre is one who hopes Iowa stays with its six-on-six game, rather than switch to the five-on-five system.
"The five-on-five game is OK," she says, "but it's not as interesting as the Iowa game. I'm afraid if they ever switch to five-on-five, people would start comparing it to the men and there's no way that a woman could compete against a man. They jump better, they're quicker, etc."
But, Denise also admits if she had it to do all over again, perhaps basketball wouldn't be the first interest.
"If I had a 10-year-old daughter," she says, "I'd encourage her to specialize in an individual sport, something like tennis, golf or gymnastics. I'd love to be where Chris Evert is today. There's not any future in girls' basketball."
And yet, you get the idea that despite the harassment that Denise has taken at times, if you turned the calendar back 20 years you'd see the same dark-haired girl playing endlessly in Denise Long Park. "I've never yet found anything that motivated me or gave me the zest and enthusiasm and love that basketball did," she say, "unless, maybe, it was talking to people about the Bible. I could do that for hours."
As a freshman at Union-Whitten High School, Denise Long scored 920 points, and that was just the beginning. For three seasons thereafter, the 5-foot 11-inch brunette dominated the state scene as no other player ever has. She scored 1,388 points as a sophomore, added 1,946 as a junior, then averaged an all-time record 68.5 points and totaled 1,986 -- both still national marks -- as a senior to wind up with 6,250 for a four-year career.
<TABLE cellSpacing=5 cellPadding=5 width=150 align=right bgColor=#ffcc99 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width=150><CENTER>
Denise Long</CENTER></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Since then her life has been filled with both highs and lows. Today, at age 31, Denise Long-Andre becomes the 100th person and only the fifth woman to be elected to The Sunday Register's Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.
There were many highlights in Long's prep career -- a 111-point performance against Dows in 1968, a state championship the same year in which she scored a state-tournament record 93 points in the first round against Bennett, a record 282 points in four games and a dramatic 113-107 overtime championship victory over Everly and Jeanette Olson, a game that ranks as the state's most memorable title contest.
When she graduated a year later, her name had been spread across the country.
She was the first woman ever drafted by the National Basketball Association -- in the eighth round by Franklin Mieuli, then the owner of the San Francisco Warriors -- and immediately was besieged by national television celebrities, including Johnny Carson.
"Even before I was drafted, I was fatigued with basketball," Denise recalls. "I was tired of it. For years I'd been practicing four hours a day ... striving to be the best.
"But when I was drafted and sought by Johnny Carson, I told myself I couldn't turn this down and decided to go to San Francisco even though I wasn't really interested in playing."
DENISE WAS 19 then, and she had been playing basketball for a long time. At age 12, she made a pact with herself to try to be the best. For four hours a day, regardless of the weather, she would work out in a park that now is appropriately called "Denise Long Park."
Her long hours of practice came partly because of two older sisters, Diane and Dana, who had seen their dreams of reaching the state tournament turned aside.
"Dana was very good," Denise says, "but three years in a row they were beaten in the district finals."
Denise, of course, never got a chance to play with the Warriors, and Mieuli's attempt at a professional women's league never got off the ground.
"We played games prior to the Warriors' contests," she said, "and no one ever really got a salary. There was a lot of talk then about introducing women's basketball to the 1972 Olympics and Mieuli used that as an excuse for not paying salaries for playing basketball. But, I really don't think there were too many players who would have had a chance to make the Olympic team."
While in California, Denise attended the University of San Francisco for a while and admits she found herself out of place.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=150 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=right width=150>
Register File Photo</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top width=150>Denise Long puts up a shot as a member of the Union-Whitten girls' basketball team. <HR noShade></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>"It was a culture shock," is the way she describes the experience. "I never knew what gay people were then and I was repulsed by homosexual marches, women burning bras and things like that. At school, my humor didn't relate to theirs, but I learned a lot."
Mieuli's league didn't last long and Denise was back in Iowa the following year, attending the University of Northern Iowa.
IT WAS THERE that she finally realized just how familiar her name had become when she was a high school basketball star.
"I wasn't aware of the splash I'd made as a basketball player," Denise says. "I was getting up to five or six obscene phone calls a night and I couldn't cope with it. My only source of strength was post cards from my dad, and he'd come up once a week for pizza."
Denise dropped out of UNI later, attended Marshalltown Community College for a year, then returned to UNI at the urging of her father.
In the meantime, she turned to a spiritual life.
"I was at Marshalltown Community College in the fall of 1971," she relates, "and one night when I came home, I saw a paper sticking out of my mother's Bible. On an impulse I grabbed it, took it into bed and read it."
Denise can still recall the scriptures she read that night, and they've had a lasting impression.
She was back at UNI the following year. After seeing a sign that read "Campus Bible Fellowship," on an impulse she started attending meetings of the group.
"That's when I took Christ as my savior," Denise says. "I soon lost interest in physical education, I only wanted to study the Bible and I transferred to Faith Baptist Bible College at Ankeny."
It was there she met Dave Sturdy, the son of a pastor. It was a typical love story, boy meets girl, etc., and the two were married.
"We were married for 41/2 years," recalls Denise, "and when we were finally divorced I grieved for a year. I just couldn't believe that two people committed toward God couldn't work things out. But, I guess we were different. I couldn't get enough knowledge of the Bible and God, and Dave was sick of it. It had been forced upon him by his father. But, in my heart, I always thought he'd come back to me."
It was while Denise was working at Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Des Moines that she met her present husband, Lee Andre.
"I was coming down the elevator one day and Lee was on it," said Denise. "As I got off he said, 'Pray for Poland,' and I said 'Are you a Christian?' and he answered, 'Yes I am.'"
The two started seeing one another and were married last June 27. They now live in a remote area southwest of Osceola, with Lee's son by a previous marriage.
DENISE'S BASKETBALL career didn't end with Mieuli's San Francisco folly. She played on a United States amateur team that toured the Orient in 1973, playing 22 games in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines and Hong Kong.
"We lost all eight in Korea," she recalls, "but won 10 others."
And then, in 1979, when the professional Iowa Cornets were seeking to stay financially solvent, Denise got a call from owner-coach Rod Lein, an old friend.
"Rod thought that my name might bring in a few people," says Denise, "but there I was, an old out-of-condition athlete sitting on the bench.
"We were playing one night at the Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids and all of a sudden one fan started chanting, 'Put in Denise.' Then, from the other side, someone yelled, 'Put in Long.' Before long the entire crowd was yelling and I couldn't believe it. Finally Rod turned to me and said, 'I'm going to have to put you in or get lynched.'
"I'll never forget that they gave me a standing ovation, even though Cedar Rapids didn't have high school ball when I played. Then the first thing I did was commit a foul. I've always said that a person is remembered by her last game. My total contribution to that pro league was one point and 40 seconds of playing time."
That standing ovation is something Denise will always remember. She also has a number of other memories she'll cherish forever.
But perhaps a couple aren't the type you'd expect.
"Sure, I remember when I got 93 points against Bennett," she recalls, "but just getting to the state tournament that year (1968) was more memorable and winning the championship was just the icing on the cake.
"If there's one game that I really think I played to my potential, it was against Hubbard in my senior year. I scored something like 80 points. But it was one of those nights where I'd take two dribbles, shoot and make it. I remember Les Heuser (the Hubbard coach) coming up after the game and saying, 'Am I glad you're finally going to graduate.'"
Then, too, there was the state tournament of 1969, Denise's senior year, when Union-Whitten, the defending champion, was beaten by Allison-Bristow in the semifinals, then dropped an 89-86 decision to Woodbine in the consolation game.
"I was really feeling bad," Denise remembers, "and I couldn't believe it that all these people kept coming up and asking for autographs. They were wonderful.
"You know," she continued, "I don't think I ever played one of my best games in the state tournament -- especially that one against Everly in the 1968 championship. I was more deliberate, more controlled in that one and that wasn't my style."
LONG-ANDRE hsn't lost all of her enthusiasm for girls' basketball.
For a number of years, she worked as a color commentator for the Iowa Radio Network at state tournaments, and says she followed the Ankeny to the state meet when she was attending Faith Baptist Bible College.
"The past two years, I've also watched the finals on television," she said.
"I've got one semester left toward a phyiscal education degree at Simpson College and I'd be foolish not to go back and get it," she added. "I'd love to coach and work basketball camps if I could give personal attention and care for the girls.
"I'm also planning on writing a book. I've got the title picked out (To Make a Long Story Short) and I've got one chapter completed. It's a Tom Sawyerish story about what it's like for a small-town girl, whose environment is nothing but basketball."
Long-Andre is one who hopes Iowa stays with its six-on-six game, rather than switch to the five-on-five system.
"The five-on-five game is OK," she says, "but it's not as interesting as the Iowa game. I'm afraid if they ever switch to five-on-five, people would start comparing it to the men and there's no way that a woman could compete against a man. They jump better, they're quicker, etc."
But, Denise also admits if she had it to do all over again, perhaps basketball wouldn't be the first interest.
"If I had a 10-year-old daughter," she says, "I'd encourage her to specialize in an individual sport, something like tennis, golf or gymnastics. I'd love to be where Chris Evert is today. There's not any future in girls' basketball."
And yet, you get the idea that despite the harassment that Denise has taken at times, if you turned the calendar back 20 years you'd see the same dark-haired girl playing endlessly in Denise Long Park. "I've never yet found anything that motivated me or gave me the zest and enthusiasm and love that basketball did," she say, "unless, maybe, it was talking to people about the Bible. I could do that for hours."
