NEW PALESTINE — Megan Long stood at a crossroad six years ago.
Already heavily involved in 4-H and a seasoned youth basketball player — though with waning interest in hoops — Long’s father, Michael, told his oldest daughter, she had a choice.
Little did Megan know her decision as a seventh-grader would pave the way to her collegiate future.
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“My dad said, ‘Megan, you need to do a sport.’ And, I asked, ‘What are my options?,’” Long recalled.
The two agreed immediately that volleyball was out of the question, since Long had no desire to master the art of spiking or setting.
That left Long only two choices.
“He told me, ‘You have cross country or tennis.’ And, I said, ‘I don’t want to run in the heat!,’” Long reminisced. “So, I came home one day after tennis tryouts, and I told my dad, I made the team. That’s how it all started because I really didn’t want to run.”
Flashforward to present day, and Long, a 2020 New Palestine graduate, is still swinging a tennis racquet with four more years of competition ahead of her at Anderson University.
While her hard “no” to running was reversed momentarily when she ran track in the eighth-grade, tennis became Long’s sport of choice after she hung up her basketball sneakers for good as a freshman.
“I couldn’t find the fun in (basketball) anymore. I had done it for so long that it kind of wore me out,” Long said. “When I was a freshman, I tried managing for the boys (tennis team) during the fall a little bit, and I thought, ‘This isn’t so bad.’ And then playing that freshman year, I thought, ‘This isn’t awful at all. It’s really fun, actually.’”
It was so enjoyable that she attended clinics at the Indianapolis Racquet Club and spent her winters there at around 2-3 days a week.
As a freshman, she started at the junior varsity level and played sparingly at the varsity level to earn a letter, while still acclimating to the sport as a singles players after testing doubles a few times in the seventh grade.
Long, who ritualistically sports a bun during matches, was cruising along with budding confidence before she found herself thrown into the varsity No. 1 singles player spot as a sophomore.
“It was a shock. It was going from JV to where it was like as long as I can last longer than my opponent, then I’m fine to varsity where the next thing you know, they’re placing the ball on you and moving you around,” Long recalled. “I was like, ‘I’m not used to this. What’s going on?’”
There were moments Long wasn’t sure why she was on the court or if she could handle the task. Her season wins total fell below 10 — way under double-digits, Long jokes now.
“There were definitely a lot of tears of frustration that year, but looking back on it, I’m glad it happened like that because I think I learned better with the shock instead of a gradual movement. The shock kind of made me change really quick and made me learn it really fast, so I could get it under control a little bit,” Long said.
The key was patience, a shift in her mental approach and an understanding coaching staff, led by former Dragons coach Des Evans and now current head coach Jean Graham.
“That year, my coaches were very forgiving with me because they understood the pressure I was under. They tried, throughout every match, to coach me with what was happening, and how I could fix it and what was going on. That way helped me work through it no matter who I was playing,” Long said.
Her coaches’ handling of the situation steered her through the process at her own pace.
While the losses mounted, so did the questions for Long, but Craig Tammen, an assistant coach at the time, worked with her daily. The duo practiced after practices on situational play, hitting and strategies.
“It was the frustration that was the hardest part in the beginning of the season, not being able to win points and matches like I was used to my freshman year. That was kind of my spiral moment because I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t winning and why I wasn’t getting balls across the net and why I wasn’t making them in?,” Long said.
“It was a lot of not being mentally prepared for that spot, and that’s what that whole season did was fix that mentality of how you thought about it.”
Towards the end of the year, it began to click, and opened Long’s eyes to her potential future as she found a rhythm.
“It was mostly mental. The physical part of it came with tweaking how I hit the ball and I moved, but the mental aspect was completely different. I went into it freshman year thinking, it’s fine. Just have fun with it. Sophomore year, getting thrown into it, you can’t have the same mental attitude with it,” Long said. “There was a lot of mental growth in all aspects of the game.”
She showed her maturation during the Hancock County Tournament late in the season when she defeated Greenfield-Central’s No. 1 singles player Lindsey McCord. Later, during the teams’ dual prior to sectional, Long won again, which inspired a new question.
“I beat her two out of the three times, and then I realized she had committed to the University of Southern Indiana. And, I was like, if I can beat her, then I can probably play in college,” Long said. “That’s where I thought maybe I should start looking at this and see if it’s something I actually want to do?”
In between sewing, showing rabbits, spot photography and taking the stage as a member of the 4-H queen pageant court, Long committed to tennis. She pushed her 5-foot-6 frame through numerous drills and muscle-memory-building practice sessions at IRC.
She started playing in offseason tournaments and looked into attending Anderson University where she committed without hesitation.
“I liked how far away it was but also close enough to home,” Long remarked on AU. “It’s that kind of happy medium, and the campus was someplace I could see myself for four years. The tennis played a part in the decision, but not as much as the campus as a whole and the people that are there and how much they care for you.”
Tennis definitely rewarded Long her junior season. Her wins total jumped to a dozen and she earned All-Hoosier Heritage Conference honors. Long was named Indiana High School Tennis Coaches Association honorable mention, which aided her recruitment by AU.
Though COVID-19 took away her final season this spring, Long feels some solace in knowing her junior campaign led a dream that she never imagined as a youth.
Her junior performance also netted her the distinction of being named an Indiana Coaches of Girls Sports Association North-South Senior All-Star.
“It means a lot (being picked as an all-star) because going from a little kid that didn’t want to run cross country, so she picked up a tennis racquet, to this shocks me sometimes. I don’t tend to think about it, but when I do, I realize I’ve really come a long way,” she said.
“There are a lot of growing pains that have occurred, but it’s really rewarding to see that no matter what you go through with this sport, there’s always something good that comes out of it.”
Much like her award-winning 4-H smartphone photo of a perfectly bloomed tree with Disney World’s Epcot Center serving as the backdrop, the memories are permanent for Long.
She is eager to return to New Palestine whenever she can next year to watch her younger sister, Erica, play her senior season of tennis in 2021. And, she plans to stay connected with 4-H somehow after she spent the past 10 years participating in it with her mom, Stephanie, and her family.
“I was kind of forced to start 4-H, a little bit,” Long laughed. “My grandparents (Joyce and Larry) were heavily involved in it as kids, and they raised my mom, aunt and uncle through it all, so they did 10 years of it. My mom thought, (my girls) need to do this. I’m glad we did because it’s been great. It’s a family thing.”
Tennis is her own, however. Down to the detail.
“I’m grateful for all of it. Without the ups and downs of especially sophomore year and freshman year, I don’t think I’d be able to be where I am without it,” Long said. “The whole process has been such a roller coaster that it’s kind of mentally prepared me for just about anything.”
