PORT ANGELES — Everywhere Millie Long has gone, she has more than proven herself.
Now, she is going home, sort of, and heading up to the top level of college athletics.
Long committed to playing a fifth year of college basketball. She starred this past year for Alaska-Anchorage, an NCAA Division II school. Now she is moving up to NCAA Division I Fresno State of the Mountain West Conference.
Long won MVPs in both soccer and basketball for Port Angeles High School. She won the NWAC player of the year for the Peninsula College women’s soccer team and was an all-North player for the Pirates’ women’s basketball team. She even won a state championship in the hurdles for the Port Angeles track team.
She left Peninsula to play a year of soccer and basketball at Cal Poly, Humboldt, in Arcata, Calif. She then decided to focus solely on basketball. In her amazing season with Alaska-Anchorage, she led the nation in steals with 4.1 a game. She was voted the Great Northwest Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year, made the conference’s first team, and averaged 12.2 points, 3.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game.
Her head coach at Alaska-Anchorage, Ryan McCarthy, was hired in late April as the new head coach for Fresno State, moving up from Division II to Division I basketball.
Long was considering transferring from Alaska-Anchorage, then chose to follow her coach to Fresno State. Four of her former AAU teammates are also following McCarthy to the California school. The assistant coach is McCarthy’s wife, Jenna McCarthy, who was at AAU, and another assistant coach is Jalon McCullough, who played at Peninsula College alongside Long a few years ago.
“There will be a lot of teammates I know,” Long said.
It’s a bit of a homecoming because Long was actually born in Fresno, but she doesn’t remember much about the city because her family moved away when she was 1.
“I love the area and the school. It’s a good community. And they love their sports teams,” she said.
Long has already graduated with a degree in sports management. She is now working on her master’s degree. She concedes it’s a big step up to NCAA Division I basketball.
“I’m excited. It will definitely be a challenge. It won’t be easy to transition to that level,” she said. She said she is both embracing the challenge and is a little nervous about it.
While she was playing in a 5,000-seat arena in Anchorage, Fresno State has a giant on-campus 16,000-seat arena called the Save Mart Center. Long said she was impressed with the arena. “It’s so cool,” she said.
Long will miss by one year playing in the new Pac-10 and getting to play in the Pacific Northwest again against Washington State and Gonzaga. Fresno State is playing one more season in the Mountain West, meaning her opponents will be teams such as Boise State, UNLV, San Diego State and Colorado State.
