King Cobra: Legendary U-W coach Eckerman to serve as BDD grand marshal

It’s been 50 years now since the Union-Whitten girls basketball team’s dominant run to the state championship on the back of perhaps the greatest 6-on-6 player ever to suit up in Iowa, and as the enduring legacies of the Cobras and coach Paul Eckerman—the 2018 Black Dirt Days parade grand marshal—have proven, the dream season has secured a permanent spot in local lore that will live on long after the participants are gone.
           
Eckerman, now 87 and living at the Oakview Nursing Home in Conrad, gravitated toward central Iowa from his native Sac City after coaching gigs at Meriden and Schaller, and upon taking the job at U-W in 1960, he knew he had a special group on his hands.
           
“I had the girls from a young age, and they looked like they had the potential,” he said.
           
Still, the ascent wasn’t instant: prior to the triumphant 1967-1968 campaign, U-W had been dispatched in the district finals five years in a row. Denise Long and company were determined to avoid the same fate, and the versatile star turned in some of the most iconic performances in hardwood history—including 110 points in a single game against Dows.
           
“She was obsessed with basketball,” Paul’s son Rick Eckerman said. “She became the benchmark.”
           
Long went on to appear on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” got her picture in Time magazine and remains the only woman ever drafted into the National Basketball League when the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors took her in the 13th round in 1969. And while she became a local and national celebrity—even securing a photo opportunity with current Warriors superstar Steph Curry earlier this year—it was Eckerman who spent days, nights and any free time he could find behind the scenes working with Long to hone her skills. 
 
Read the full story in the Black Dirt Days section of this week's Grundy Register. Subscribe by calling (319) 824-6958 or clicking here.