After the Lewis-Clark State men’s basketball team earned a road win Feb. 1, coach Austin Johnson summoned his star shooting guard and had him call his mom. He wanted Josiah Westbrook to hear the news from her: That Josiah’s dad, Anthony Westbrook, earlier that day had died “unexpectedly,” according to family members (who didn’t give any further details).

Also there with Josiah when his world got turned upside down in that locker room in Great Falls, Mont., was teammate Damek Mitchell — for whom the revelation also came as a gut punch.

“I knew his dad well, and that was heartbreaking to me as well,” said Mitchell, who immediately put his arm around Josiah and wept alongside him. “We were just all in that room and it just broke all of our hearts.

“Right there, we prayed for Josiah, we hugged him and told him everyone’s here for him and told him we’re a family. And I think that helped him get through what he’s gone through.”

Josiah, a senior, had been very close with his father. Anthony, 51, often would travel to Lewiston to attend his son’s college basketball games — despite the seven-hour drive from Bellingham, Wash. Before games, Anthony would offer his son some words of wisdom (he was a pastor) and a Gatorade.

“He was always there for Josiah,” Mitchell said, “and he would do anything for him.”

Truly anything.

•••

When Anthony reached out in fall 2018 to the Northwest Indian College men’s basketball coach to find out what it would take to try out for his team (apparently just taking a full course load), he explained to Mike Schjang why he wanted to do so.

“He expressed to me that the reason why he was doing it was (because) he wanted to show his boys that anything’s possible,” Schjang said, “and that you can get whatever you want in life if you work hard at whatever the goals you need to accomplish are — to get to where you need to be.

“And this was his way of showing his boys that.”

Anthony was working two jobs at the time — during the day as a counselor for the Lummi Indian Business Council, and at night as a security guard. That made it exceedingly taxing for Anthony to attend the team’s practices, which started at 6 a.m.

“He went right from his 8-to-5 job, to his graveyard-shift job — and went straight from that to practice,” Schjang said. “He would roll into practice straight from work.”

Continued Schjang, “What I really appreciated with him was just his work ethic. It was something you couldn’t really measure. And the cherry on top was when he said, ‘I have a boy, he plays for Lewis-Clark, and it looks like they’re our first game on the schedule and I want to surprise him.’”

The Warriors beat Anthony and his visiting NWIC team twice, first by the score of 111-37 on Oct. 20, 2018, at the Activity Center, and the next day at the same venue by 85. During those two games, Anthony played a combined 10 minutes and went 0-for-6 from the floor, with his son guarding him on at least one of those shots.

Lynn Westbrook, Josiah’s mom, said her son initially was “shocked,” to see his dad on the other team.

“Now, I’m sure it’s a beautiful memory that he’s glad he got to make,” she added.

•••

Lynn sees a handful of similarities between Josiah and his father. Josiah can communicate with someone he’s just met as if that person’s been a lifelong friend — and his dad had a knack for that too.

Both lived spiritually — praying together before Josiah’s games.

And both loved sports — that often was the way they connected with each other, since Anthony had been a three-sport athlete in high school.

“They had that same determination, that fire to win,” Lynn said, “but yet also, (they) had that compassion toward people.

“That part, I can definitely speak of.”

So can many others.

When Andre McCowan struggled with his reduced playing time during the Warriors’ 2018-19 season, Josiah constantly reassured him that he was just as important as anyone else to the team’s hopes of making its first Final Four (which LCSC did, before losing in the national-semifinal round).

“He would always help me keep my head up,” McCowan said.

It’s not just on the court that Josiah’s been there for his teammates. Mitchell has a daughter, and said Josiah’s always asking about her.

“He wants to hear what she’s done,” Mitchell said, “and that just makes me happy.”

Josiah’s always been good at making others happy. Lynn first realized this when he was a toddler.

She had brought Josiah along with her to a work conference — and to the side of the room, there was a woman with her head down, as if she were sad. Josiah, who was beside his mom on the floor, immediately noticed.

“And before I knew it,” Lynn said, “(Josiah) had crawled over to her, put his hand on hers, and held it until she smiled and said, ‘It’s OK.’ And as soon as she (smiled), he left and came back to me.”

Continued Lynn, “(Josiah) was so young, but I have never forgotten that. I thought, ‘Wow, to be so young and very in tune, where you were concerned about somebody.’”

That’s never changed, Lynn said. If Josiah sees someone on the street corner asking for money, he’ll give them what he can.

“I’ve seen him do that so many times, I’ve lost count,” Lynn said. “He will go into his pocket for his last dollar and give that to them.”

Teammate Khalil Stevenson’s seen that too.

“He does that a lot,” Stevenson said, relating a recent trip to the gas station with Josiah that ended similarly. “If he were to not do those things, you’d be like, ‘Is everything OK?’ To find him in a different state would be shocking.”

In elementary school, Ephraim Westbrook, Josiah’s older brother, said his sibling often asked their mom for extra lunch money — but it wasn’t for himself. It was for another kid at school.

“She was wondering where it was all going,” Ephraim said, “and then she found out.

“He’s really sensitive and caring and that’s a side of Josiah that I don’t think maybe gets enough (attention), as much as his other qualities do.”

About those other qualities: Josiah averaged 12.5 points per game this season and ranked sixth in the NAIA in 3-point efficiency (48 percent) while helping the No. 6 Warriors (29-3) complete their best regular season in school history. The team went 27-3 during the regular season, rose as high as No. 3 in the national rankings and earned an automatic bid to the NAIA tournament by dominating Carroll College in the Frontier Conference tournament final.

Josiah scored a game-high 19 points in that March 9 contest and took the championship net to bed with him (initially falling asleep in it, until he woke up and found his neck “all itchy”).

Three days later, the NAIA canceled its national tournament.

•••

When Johnson asked Josiah if he wanted to take some time off after his dad died, Josiah’s response was that he wanted to “finish what my dad and I started.”

He won’t get that chance — at least not at L-C, with the coronavirus pandemic having stopped the world in its tracks. But that hasn’t changed Josiah’s outlook on life.

“It would be easy to come back from that and think the world owes you more, but when Josiah came back, he was just as humble,” Johnson said.

That’s the feeling Melissa Weitz got while getting to know Josiah through her work as a member of L-C’s athletic department.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of athletes over the years, and you can tell a lot about who someone is by how they treat the support staff and administrative staff,” Weitz said. “Josiah’s been one of them who’s gone out of his way to really be social and get to know us and be kind and just tell us thank you.”

Even before big games, Weitz said, Josiah still would make it a point to be friendly toward anyone he encountered.

“It just shows who he is,” Weitz said. “You can tell he’s a real person — it’s not fake, it’s not an act.

“He’s just through and through a good person, with a good heart.”

Just like his dad.

Edelman may be contacted at bedelman@lmtribune.