Overlooking Jerome Kersey Court at Willett Hall, six retired jerseys hang in homage to some of the most prominent student-athletes in Longwood basketball history.
Perhaps there should be a dotted line connecting two of the most recognizable of those numbers, women's basketball standout Carmille Barnette's No. 43 and men's basketball stalwart Jerome Kersey's No. 54. Both were Division II All-Americans, both occupy places in in the Longwood Athletics Hall of Fame, and both take up significant space in Longwood's all-time record books.
But the connections between Barnette and Kersey, whose careers defined Longwood's success on the hardwood in the early and mid-1980s, run much deeper. While their basketball prowess and common bonds as Lancers will forever link the two, their ties date back well before they ever donned the Longwood blue and white. Before they became the pride of Longwood University, Barnette and Kersey were first the pride of Bluestone High School.
With a current enrollment of 514, Bluestone is in Skipwith, Va., about an hour's drive south of Longwood. Bluestone has become an unheralded pipeline of some of the most well-known athletes to ever come through Longwood, from Barnette and Kersey to all-time baseball greats Doug Toombs and Frankie Watson, Major League Baseball veteran Michael Tucker and his nephew, current Longwood baseball standout Antwaun Tucker.
However, Barnette and Kersey have much more in common than their shared alma maters. Their paths to Longwood and their skyrocketing career trajectories once there were both the byproduct of shared traits and characteristics and turned them from once-unheralded recruits to two of the most decorated players in Longwood history.
Bill Bowles, Kersey's basketball and football coach at Bluestone, saw those traits firsthand.
"You just pushed them hard," Bowles of Barnette and Kersey. "They understood work. I think that was the biggest thing, because they all had to work. I enjoyed coaching them for that reason."
Barnette's hard work overcame a less-than-stellar first impression she made to a Longwood recruiter, who first saw Barnette while scouting an older teammate.
"At the time they saw me [as a high school junior], I wasn't in playing shape whatsoever to be on any (college) team," she said. "The following year, [Longwood assistant coach] Loretta Coughlin came back and saw me, and I had gotten myself into basketball form and shape. She stuck with me and she gave me the opportunity."
That opportunity would take Barnette from the primitive proving grounds of her youth to the pristine hardwood and bright lights of Willett Hall, but she never lost the love of the game she and her friend and teammate, Vikki Lenhart, honed outdoors on the dirt and gravel roads of her hometown.
"At my home we had a dirt court and it was basically training 'Rocky style' in a rural area," she said. "Miles and miles of country roads. My aunt had a gravel road and I would run up and down just to get in training. That is basically how I would stay in form. There were no gyms anywhere around. There wasn't a YMCA or anything."
Kersey too trained in challenging conditions during his Bluestone days and, like Barnette, proved that sweat and grit aren't exclusive to well-lit gyms and buffed hardwood courts. As he shared in his commencement address to the 2009 Longwood graduates, "Hard work is the secret sauce." And Kersey, who earned his Bachelor of Science in social work from Longwood, practiced what he preached.
"I think from the standpoint of leadership, everybody looked up to his playing hard," said Kersey's head coach at Longwood, Cal Luther, in an interview with former Longwood Sports Information Director Hoke Currie.
"I think he influenced other people on the floor by the way he played. And he played hard in practice just like he did in the ball games. I'm sure he might have had some off days, but I can't specially recall him dogging it in practice. He really, really hustled in practice. At the end of practice when everybody was dragging, you know, in a scrimmage situation or what have you, he was still getting after people hard and batting the ball loose, and going down on the break, or putting a lid on the goal."
But even as transcendent of talents both Barnette and Kersey were, they both acknowledged that their success before, during and after Longwood could not have occurred without help of friends and family.
"You won't do it alone," Kersey also told the 2009 graduates. "You can't do it alone. You don't need to do it alone. In life, success is a team effort. Most of you had the help of at least one other person whose presence or support at a critical moment helped you arrive at this moment."
For Kersey, it was the help of Luther that set him on a career path to the NBA.
His big break came at the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a postseason showcase for college basketball seniors. Originally not invited, Luther tapped into his NBA contacts to get Jerome on the standby list. When a spot opened, Jerome seized the chance and earned All-PIT honors. Most importantly, he impressed NBA executives and was selected by the Portland Trailblazers in the second round of the 1984 NBA draft. He went on to enjoy a 17-year NBA career in which he reached the NBA Finals three times, won it with the San Antonio Spurs in 1999 and even nearly took down the legendary Michael Jordan in a runner-up finish in the 1987 NBA Dunk Contest.
Meanwhile, Barnette still holds her Longwood coaches Shirley Duncan and Coughlin near and dear to her heart.
"Both of them, they are my family forever," she said. "I look at them for leading me as a student, in getting me prepared to get my education, and to instilling values in me, and they will always be a part of my family."
Coughlin remembers that along with her coaching duties, she trained Barnette in another setting as her anatomy class tutor, helping Barnette eventually earn her B.S. in health and physical education.
"We had some interesting study sessions taking an anatomy class," said Coughlin, now a Health and Physical Education teacher in Charlottesville. "We were up past midnight, and I had flashcards and I just remembered talking about muscles around the face and skull and all these little teeny-tiny muscles in the arm and hand and had these flash cards going. We were like punch drunk going over and over and then things got really silly."
Barnette, who is now a physical education teacher for students with behavioral and psychological issues and a homebound educator, knows the importance of paying it forward. She often finds herself using Coach Duncan's slogans. "Always finish on a make."
That slogan embodies the life of Kersey as well, even after his sudden passing at age 52 on Feb. 18, 2015. His death rocked his friends, family and fans on opposite sides of the country, from the hometown fans who watched him blossom at Bluestone and Longwood, to the Portland faithful who adopted him as one of the most beloved players in franchise history.
But even in his absence, Kersey's legacy lives on, not just for his success on the court, but for his impact off of it. After retiring from the NBA in 2001, he dabbled in coaching before eventually joining the Trail Blazers' front office as the Director of Player Programs and later a Trail Blazers Ambassador. In those roles, he worked with Trail Blazer alumni and the Portland community, while also helping rookies from lesser-known colleges who were hungry for NBA success – essentially mirrors for the high-flying Lancer he was decades before.
"Jerome was a serious influence early on in [NBA All-Star and Portland point guard] Damian Lillard," said Orlando Turner, Jerome's longtime friend and teammate at Longwood.
"He talked about how he would spend time talking to Damian about work ethic and about certain things in life. If you are a star, you normally don't do that. But Jerome was one of those guys that gave back. And I can see it in the tenacity. If you think about how Jerome played, he was very, very tenacious. Most people focused on his skills, but he was the type that pretty much exceeded those expectations. In terms of paying it forward, I see it in the way Damian Lillard is playing today."
And whether it's players like Lillard mentored by Kersey, or the students now under Barnette's care, the individuals inspired by those two number in the hundreds, if not thousands. Their contributions on the court are why their jerseys hang in Willett Hall, but their intrinsic drive and inspiring work ethic are why their legacies endure to this day.
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