Long Creek’s Jennifer Jones takes the ball up the court during her team’s game against Huntington on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2022. Jones starts for the Mountaineers and is one of two girls playing for the Long Creek boys basketball team during the 2022-2023 season.

Change is inevitable. But for Long Creek head basketball coach Amos Studtmann, that change brings more of the same as he is teaching an all-new crop of foreign students the game — just as he does pretty much every year.

Studtmann and the Mountaineer faithful got to see the result of those efforts firsthand when his team hosted Huntington on Saturday, Dec. 3. The game was a low-scoring affair through the first half of play, with Huntington taking a 26-9 lead into halftime.

The second half of the contest saw improvement for the Mountaineers, who held the Locomotives to 19 points the rest of the way. With a number of players who were new to the game of basketball on the Long Creek squad, the scoring to complement the defensive turnaround didn’t materialize.

Ultimately, the Mountaineers would fall to the Locomotives 45-19. Charles Kreamier led all Long Creek scorers with eight points in the contest. Vinicius Girardi was the team’s second-highest scorer, finishing with four points on the day.

Studtmann acknowledged the challenge in teaching a fresh group of players the basics of basketball every season but praised the effort those new to the game have put into learning the fundamentals.

“It’s always a challenge because we have a lot of kids that have never played before, on any level — high school, middle school, clubs or recreational. But our group, I’ve been very happy with their growth, with their learning, with their energy, their focus. I couldn’t ask for more from them,” he said.

Long Creek School office manager Jennifer Garinger said Long Creek is a part of a foreign exchange program.

“Long Creek has historically taken exchange students. Sometimes there are a lot, sometimes a few. Last year we had none,” Garringer said.

Long Creek has three exchange students enrolled this year, with a total enrollment of just 10 high school students, according to OSAA enrollment information.

Another aspect of Studtmann’s unique situation is the fact that Long Creek does not have a girls basketball team. With too few girls to field their own team and a co-op with Ukiah a thing of the past, circumstances have led to a pair of girls, freshman Jennifer Jones and junior German exchange student Emma Raab, playing on the Long Creek boys team.

Jones starts for the Mountaineers and has prior basketball experience. When asked about playing against boys, she said it was no different than playing in any other game.

“(It was) the same. I also haven’t ever played on an all-girls team before,” she said.

Raab, on the other hand, played in her first-ever competitive basketball game Saturday against Huntington.

“I was scared before the game because I know that you shouldn’t have a lot of body contact with the other players so you don’t foul them and I knew we would have,” she said. “So I was scared that it would be uncomfortable or weird, but it was not that at all.”

When asked if they were afraid that boys would take it easy on them or underestimate them because they are girls on a boys team, Raab quickly responded with “I hope they do. If they underestimate us, we have a better chance against them.”

Jones also chimed in, saying that playing on a boys team gives them the chance to be better.

“If they think they’re better just because we are girls, then we can just be better. Against some of them, we already are anyways,” Jones said.

For coach Studtmann, this is all a continuation of a dynamic that, while unique, isn’t something he would ever trade.

“I’m glad they get this experience, and I’m always happy to have this experience,” he said. “Every year we get kids from all over the world. It might be different in a bigger area, but I wouldn’t want to swap.”