The one and only, Denise LONG..............
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.
Since then her life has been filled with both highs and lows. Today, at age 59, 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."