THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Steve Long: Father figure, coach, jokester, friend

Steve Long was more than just a coach. 

In the fall of 1984, a freshman free safety named Brad Peugh was good enough to make the varsity football team at Post Falls High. 

His position coach was Steve Long. 

But their ties would run deeper than that. 

“We got to be really tight,” Peugh recalled. “He’s like a second dad to me.” 

Eventually, Peugh and Long coached together on the Post Falls football staff for 10 years. 

“We hung out, we did a lot of stuff together outside of football,” Peugh said. “I don’t know, we just clicked. We just had that special bond; we hung out all the time. They (Steve and wife Debbie) still call me their kid, because they didn’t have any kids.” 

Steve Long, who coached football and taught P.E., weight training and life sports for 32 years at Post Falls High starting in 1974, and was also an assistant track and field coach, passed away at age 76 on Jan. 18 outside Phoenix, where he and Debbie lived following retirement, where he often played golf (with two lifetime holes-in-one), lifted weights and generally stayed as active as possible. 

“He’s my dude. I miss him every day,” Peugh said. 

STEVE LONG “brought out the better in everybody.” 

Mike Curtis and Steve Long starting coaching together on the Post Falls High football staff in the mid-1970s. 

“He saw the potential of every kid that was on the field,” Curtis recalled. “He treated them like they were his own sons, and that was just the kind of guy he was. He loved kids, and they loved him back. 

“We had special needs kids, and Steve treated those kids just like he did our No. 1 quarterback.” 

“He was very knowledgeable about the game,” Peugh said. “I guess I had the attitude to play the game, but he brought out the better in everybody. 

“He was always positive. I never really heard him be mad at anybody. He was a pretty happy dude.” 

STEVE LONG gave back. 

Last year, Steve and Debbie established the Stephen H. Long and Deborah Maxwell Long Brave and Bold Scholarship at the University of Idaho, where he graduated after attending Moscow High. 

The scholarship is to be given annually to a Post Falls High graduate who is a member of the Vandal football team. 

On years where there isn’t one, it can go to a Post Falls grad, male or female, playing any sport at Idaho. 

“He just always wanted to continue to give, and I will continue to give in his honor,” said Debbie, his wife of 51 years, and a retired educator (special ed) at Lakeland and the University of Idaho.

At the annual Vandal booster golf tournament, Steve sponsored holes, and paid for teams to play. 

This year, Debbie said, there will be a hole in his memory. 

Remember the Battle for the Prairie Pig, a basketball game/spirit competition between Post Falls and Lakeland high schools for many years? 

Steve Long played a role in starting that, along with his good friend Terry Kiefer, the former longtime football coach at Lakeland. 

For a time, before the new high school was built, Steve Long was athletic director at Post Falls High. But those administrative duties took him away from teaching and coaching and being around kids, so he chose to return to teaching. 

Other schools tried to lure him away, to no avail. 

“He had opportunities to leave Post Falls for other districts,” Debbie said, “but he always felt kids at PFHS were the best of the best, and this is where I need to be.” 

She choked up as she read through a few of the hundreds of cards sent to her by former coaches, athletes and students touched by Steve Long. 

“He made sure every student, regardless of ability, was successful,” said one card. 

“That touched my heart,” Debbie said. 

One of his students at Post Falls nominated him for Who’s Who Among American Teachers, and he was eventually honored.

Debbie said kids who wanted to be teachers wanted to do their teaching internships with Steve Long. 

He took kids to lunch at the local seafood and burger place. 

He paid for kids’ physicals, so they could play sports. 

He had kids out to the house in Twin Lakes, landscaping and shoveling snow off the roof. 

“He always tried to find ways to teach them about work ethic,” Debbie said. 

If a student needed a P.E. credit but was not into team sports, Steve Long got the OK from administrators to create a life sports class at Post Falls High — downhill skiing, snowboarding, scuba diving, horseback riding, bowling, pickleball, learning about grooming and riding a horse. 

“He just made connections with people,” Debbie said. “He was kind and he was generous and he was always there for other people.” 

STEVE LONG made people laugh. 

“He had more one-liners than anyone I ever met in my life,” Curtis said. “He kept everybody loose; gave every kid a nickname. If you didn’t get a nickname from coach Long, there was something wrong with you.” 

Even coaches got nicknames from Steve Long. 

Even Curtis. 

But, “I’m not going to tell you what it was,” Curtis said with a laugh. 

Long also gave Brad Peugh a nickname, but we won’t share that  one either. 

Even Steve Long had a nickname, and we can share that one. As the story goes, when he attended Moscow High, the kids in his circle all developed gangster names.  

“They called him Lugs,” Curtis said. “So his closest friends in his coaching circle, they all called him Lugs.” 

STEVE LONG hated winter. 

At least North Idaho winters. 

And thus, his annual “I Hate Winter” parties were born. 

“He loved Idaho, he loved North Idaho, but he hated the cold,” Peugh said. “So that’s why they moved to Arizona, so he could have nice weather. During school, even when I was a student, they had a certain time of the year, him and Debbie would throw a party for the coaches and teacher — take your mind off shoveling and have a few beers.” 

“He was the person that gathered everyone together,” Debbie said. 

Peugh said it didn’t surprise him when Steve Long told him they were putting their Twin Lakes house up for sale and moving south. 

“His ‘I Hate Winter’ parties were the best,” said Jeri Lee, another former coach, and the wife of former Trojan football coach Jerry Lee. “He really hated the cold, so retiring in Arizona was right up his alley. Everybody loved him and his sense of humor. He kept us in stitches with his stories. He was such a good friend and we miss him so much.” 

Asked about those “I Hate Winter” parties, “I can’t go into those either,” Curtis said with a laugh. 

STEVE LONG touched the lives of so many people in North Idaho and Arizona. 

How do we know this? 

There are seven — seven! — celebrations of life planned in his honor. 

“And there may be an eighth,” Debbie said. 

There has already been two of them, in Prescott Valley, Ariz., where they live part of the year. 

There will be one in Sun City West, Ariz., in the fall, for their snowbird friends.  

And two in Moscow, where he grew up, and attended high school and college. 

And two are scheduled in Coeur d’Alene — one of them open to the public. 

That celebration of life for Steve Long is scheduled for Aug. 2 at 3 p.m. at the Coeur d’Alene Elks Lodge, 1170 W. Prairie Ave., near the Caddy Shack. 

Brad Peugh and Steve Long kept in contact after Long retired and moved to Arizona some two decades ago.  

“The first thing he wanted to know was how my kids were doing,” Brad recalled, “then how the baseball team was doing, or how the football team was going to be, or wrestling ... it was all just Post Falls-related. 

“He just poured his soul into Post Falls High School.” 

After Steve passed, Brad went to Arizona to help out Debbie — and found out that Steve Long’s neighbors and friends in Sun City West and Prescott Valley, were just as fond of him as were his players and coaching friends in Post Falls. 

“He was just a tremendous influence on my life," Peugh said. 

“His generosity continues,” Debbie said. “His love for all continues — it’s just that he changed addresses.” 

"Hopefully I made him proud,” Brad Peugh said. “He was one helluva dude.” 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.