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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Long On Name And Resolve Hard-Working Longoria Steps Up For UI Football

Jim Meehan Staff Writer

Dave Longoria wanted to play college football. However, college football didn’t want him.

Highline Community College asked him to wrestle. He chose to walk on at Idaho where he became scout-team fodder as a freshman running back.

Volunteered for it, even. Figured it would get him noticed when nobody else volunteered to get their tonsils relocated by linebackers Duke Garrett and Jason Shelt, et al., during drills.

Then coach John L. Smith took to calling him Longo-REEuh, instead of the correct Lon-GOReeuh. “It took them about a month before they pronounced my name right,” said Longoria, taking a break from preparations for Idaho’s Big Sky Conference opener at Idaho State in Pocatello on Saturday. “They had it spelled wrong on my locker.”

Three years later - his name is spelled right and pronounced correctly - he starts at outside linebacker and he’s a team captain.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” says Longoria’s prep coach, Gill James, at Nooksack High in tiny Everson, Wash. “I knew what kind of kid he is and I knew he’d work his butt off to make himself what he is.”

If working his butt off meant lifting weights at 5:30 a.m. before high school classes started, Longoria did it. When his mother chewed him out at the breakfast table for skipping a lifting session - “You’re a wimp,” she’d say - he’d make up for it with an after-school workout.

If it meant playing with a broken wrist since his freshman year at Idaho, he did it. He had unsuccessful surgery on his wrist as a sophomore and wears a cast for protection. Painful? “Very,” he said. “I take lots of Ibuprofen.”

It is an easy picture to paint of

Longoria being self made, a blue-collar type who hasn’t let average athletic ability stop him from becoming an above-average player.

“Standing there in his street clothes, he’s not going to knock you out with his physical presence,” UI coach Chris Tormey said. “But he sure plays hard. His leadership is big. Players look up to him.”

The people Longoria looks up to are pretty much reflections of himself. His grandfather is a retired dairy farmer, “but he works hard every day and he’s 80 years old,” said Longoria, who was moved from running back to linebacker as a sophomore. “And he’s really smart, very modest. You have to drag everything out of him. He does math in his head. He smoked for 10 years then just decided to stop one day.”

His older brother, Dan, introduced Dave to weight lifting and hard work. “He’s a really … great role model. Whenever I watched him play, he was going against guys twice his size and he’d still be making plays.”

Away from football, Longoria, now a senior, is reserved and rarely talks of himself in glowing terms. “I was basically a contributor in high school until my senior year,” he said. “I stood out a little then. Wait, I don’t want to say that. I had a good year.”

Ask coach James if that’s accurate and he replies, “Yeah. He finished something like eighth all-time in rushing at all levels” in Washington prep history.

Longoria’s goals are modest - earn second-team All-Big Sky, continue the revival of Idaho’s defense and stay healthy. Anything else?

“I just want other coaches, when they see me on film, to say at least this is a guy who plays hard,” Longoria said.

According to Tormey, that’s already happened.

“He just symbolizes toughness,” Tormey said. “You say the name Longoria and I say toughness.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo