Mark Wagner
Special to ICT
This spring, Maddison Long (Navajo, Coeur D’Alene) signed on for an athletic scholarship to attend the University of Maryland, where she will play in a D1 golf program. This is the next step in a journey that has filled a trophy case and then some. Named New Mexico Player of the Year in District 1 5A, a division she won two years in a row, this year Maddison also took top five honors in New Mexico’s statewide tournament.
What makes Maddison stand out is her poise and determination, but also that her success may be seen as the work of many hands, many people, and new levels of organizational support for young Native American athletes.
Kristi Daniels-Long (Coeur d’Alene) is the mother of Maddison and Maddison’s sister, Olivia, also a decorated golfer. Kristi relates how important Nike N7 and NB3 (the foundation founded by Notah Begay lll) have been to these two young champions. Both have also taken lessons with Jason Montoya (Santa Ana Pueblo) at ElevateMindBodyGolf at Santa Ana Golf Club. Maddison was also selected – along with Zachary BlueEyes – to play in the 2023 Begay Championship and was part of the PGA Pathways to Progression program. A proud mother, Kristi had been around the junior golf scene to offer a long perspective.
“NB3 is what really lit the fire for Maddison,” she said. “I loved how they instilled in the kids the rules and course etiquette. They also really taught the kids about their short game. We were thrilled when Clint Begay, Notah’s brother, started working with Maddison and the girls when they started on the NB3 Elite Golf Team.”
Kristi also recounts a visit to the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon. She is friends with Sam McCracken (Sioux, Assiniboine) who founded the N7 program at Nike, a program designed around health and wellness and support for young Native athletes. As Mr. McCracken showed them the Nike campus grounds, he pointed out a flag where the first Nike-sponsored professional Native American – Lyle Thompson, the lacrosse great – was celebrated. Sam suggested one day Maddison’s face might grace a Nike flag. It’s not out of the question.
With the growth of Native-owned golf courses such as Santa Ana and Talking Stick, along with foundations such as NB3 and N7, many tribes are also now in a position to offer that financial and professional support. All of this represents a huge shift from the generations that came before.
Maddison’s mother Kristi told ICT: “When I got diagnosed with cancer it was her freshman year, and COVID had just taken over. After the lift and everyone could go back to school, Maddison chose to stay online. She stayed home to help me but also she said, ‘Why should I get up and go to school with all that drama when I can stay at home in my PJ’s and go to the golf course and practice when I want?’”
Helping out at home, Maddison continued to work with her coach, Jason Montoya.
“Jason would meet us at Twin Warriors where they have a practice facility, and he would work with the girls,” Krist said. “They never stopped practicing through that crazy time (of COVID). We had the net outside and the putting mat in our garage. Maddison’s thought process was eat, sleep and golf and hang out with her sister.”
Where many in past generations had to go it alone, this new generation has not only support but models to look up to in people like Notah Begay lll and Gabby Lemieux. Maddison has taken note. Following the Native American Open, she said, “Gabby Lemieux has been a big role model to me as a Native American woman and a golfer. I met her at a junior golf clinic and after that got to play 9 with her. Since then, I have followed her journey through the Epson Tour and her debut in the 2022 U.S. Women’s Open. She inspired me to pursue my passion in golf and show that with enough dedication I can succeed in it.”
No-go zones
On my way to the Native American Open at Santa Ana Golf Club, where I would meet many of the Native American youth playing high level golf, I had a Diné guide Ou Yea Wa take me through the Valles Caldera. Near the edge of the red desert, I asked about the makers and signs noting that stealing Indigenous remains and artifacts is illegal.
“There’s still a lot of untouched lands,” Ou Yea Wa told me. “No-go zones. Not even the sheriffs will go there. … It’s where the missing people are. Young women in particular.” In this era of having all kinds of information in the palm of our hands, I searched my iPhone and told my guide that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children report that Native American children comprised 415 of the 27,733 children reported in 2021. Ou Yea Wa laughed at these numbers. “The local tribes will tell you the number is much higher than that.”
As I watched the junior champion golfers playing in the Native American Open, I couldn’t shake the image of no-go zones and Missing Young Women in the desert. The foursome I followed included Peyton Beans Factor (Chickasaw), Sadie Kelley (Oneida), and the Long girls – Maddison and Oliva. All of them were escorted by women and men, their mothers and fathers, or their coaches.
“Do you mind if I take pictures?” I asked one, not sure if he was either a father or a coach. He smiled and answered, “She’s the one playing.” He pointed out onto the fairway where a slight 16-year-old with a big stick was lining up a shot. I learned later I was watching the Chickasaw champion golfer – Peyton Beans Factor – who was standing in the 10th fairway and playing in the Native American Open for the first time. Beans was coming off a hole-in-one at an American Junior Golf Association at Twins Hills Golf and Country Club in Joplin, Missouri. She was playing in the championship flight alongside Maddison and Olivia and Sadie Kelley (Oneida).
Sadie Kelley’s father Lance would later tell me about a tournament in Phoenix. “Last week, my daughter played in her first college tournament of the spring season. There were three Native girls playing in the tournament. Just another example of the interest in golf and how it’s improving for women, especially for Native women.” (Sadie plays for Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. The other two Native players were from Bemidji State and Western Texas.)
I was reminded of something the great golfer Rod Curl had told me many moons before, in my lesson with him: “Go watch the ladies. Ninety percent of them get it.” He was referring to the idea that there was a correct way – a perfect way – to swing a golf club. And further back, my mind searches for an image of Althea Gibson, lifting the club high after impact. These young players had that preternatural smoothness, a relaxed manner that had no unnecessary glitches. Maddison’s swing finished with a pronounced lift of her body at impact, hips sliding forward. No magic or secret to it. Just one, graceful motion.
And I’ll long remember Maddison’s face returning to her cart. She had a look of both determination and acceptance. Her face seemed to say what a golfer knows: good or bad, I have to play the next shot. They go where we hit them. No one else can play the next shot for us.
That next shot includes D1 golf. She is not the first Native woman to go this route. And she has a role model as she goes. Gabby Lemieux was once ranked No. 1 in the nation at Texas Tech. She also has NB3, N7 and a lot of Indian Country pulling for her.
Golf rises to the challenge
There is a well-known story about the tennis and golf great Althea Gibson (African American, Lumbee). As we know, Gibson was the first of our First People to lift the Rosewater Trophy at Wimbledon. (She won Wimbledon twice, in addition to nine other major titles.) In 1958, at the height of her barrier-breaking tennis career, Gibson heard what she called “the siren song of golf.” In an era of professional golf when she would have to change in her car – not being allowed to use the clubhouse because her skin was dark – Gibson returned to the sport she had learned to love at Florida A and M. She was instrumental in integrating women’s professional golf, and would play 13 years on the LPGA Tour.
But in 1995, Gibson, at the age of 68, called her former doubles partner, Angela Buxton. Gibson couldn’t make rent or pay her medical bills. She was in bad health, living a reclusive, depressive life and in a suicidal trough. Gibson saw no reason to live. She called Buxton to say goodbye.
In response, Buxton placed a letter in Tennis Week magazine in a plea to the tennis community. For the rest of her life, until she passed in 2003, Gibson received envelopes with cash – in multiple denominations and currencies – from those she had inspired.
For Gibson and others of earlier generations, there was no NB3 or Nike N7, no First Tee or Junior USTA programs to take generational talents and care for them. Gibson’s story illustrates how important not only tribal and family support is, but also how critical organizational support is for young Native talents like Peyton Beans Factor and Maddison Long, for Olivia Long, for Sadie Kelley, for Aiden Thomas and Zachary BlueEyes. In that respect, Native golf has made tremendous strides in a number of ways and the future is bright.
To look more like America
In 2023, the PGA announced the Pathways to Progression program as a way to develop junior and collegiate golfers from traditionally under-represented communities. Not surprisingly, Maddison Long is one of two Native golfers to have been selected.
Kenyatta Ramsey, the PGA’s vice president of player development who oversees the Pathways to Progression program, said the 24 athletes chosen for the program were recruited from a number of junior programs, all focused on golfers from under-represented groups. NB3 and N7 were involved in identifying Maddison Long and Zachary BlueEyes (Navajo). The two were among 24 junior athletes in the program’s inaugural year. Ramsey said his role involves securing investments and recruiting organizations that will help to eliminate or reduce the barriers young minority players face when it comes to advancement in the game of golf.
For Ramsey, these barriers relate to resources at an earlier age. “Tiger Woods didn’t lead to more Black and Brown golfers,” Ramsey said. “It takes a lot more than talent. We aim to have the right people developing that talent. Why? We want golf to look more like America.”
For parents like Adrian Reeves Long, father of Olivia and Maddison and a standout baseball player – Rowdy Long – it’s about the picks up and drop offs and long days, but now coaches, NB3, N7, now even the PGA, are nurturing a new generation of Native Americans in golf – the least violent and most difficult game in human history. Maddison is one of many helping golf to look more like America. This fall, she will join female golfers from around the country at the University of Maryland and continue her climb.
No one can predict the results of Maddison’s journey, and we won’t know who of this new generation will take their games to new heights, but they’ll have all of Indian Country pulling for them, and that support starts with tribe and family.
As Kristi Daniels-Long told ICT:
“The girls will smudge their bags and clubs before they leave the house for a tournament. They know that we come from some proud blood lines on my Coeur d’Alene side and also on their dad’s Navajo side. I have taught them that some people have no idea where they even come from, but we do and to always walk with pride.”
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