AMESBURY — Parker DeLong really didn’t mince words.
“I’ve dedicated my life to this sport,” said the Amesbury basketball star.
Which made what happened over the weekend even more special.
As the final seconds ticked away in the third quarter of Sunday’s home game against Whittier Tech, DeLong used a screen set by teammate Ollie Peters, and pulled up for a 25-foot 3-pointer with a defender closing out. With a hand in his face, DeLong still let the shot spiral off his fingertips, and watched as it perfectly swished through a net that he’s become all too familiar with over the last four years.
Seconds later: Pandemonium.
The picture-perfect triple — which kicked off a celebration on the court — gave DeLong 22 points for the game, and more importantly, it gave him 1,000 exactly for his celebrated career. He is the 10th Amesbury athlete (6th boy) to hit the coveted basketball milestone, and is the first to do so since both Avery Hallinan (1,298) and Cam Keliher (1,031) reached the mark during the 2021-22 season.
“It feels great,” said DeLong. “Being able to accomplish what I did, and to get my name up there (on the school’s 1,000-point scorers banner), it means a lot. To always be in this gym and to be remembered, that’s something I dreamed of when I got to high school.”
And 24 hours later, he added to that total.
DeLong would get one more basket on his special day, finishing with 24 points to lead Amesbury to a much-needed 75-63 victory. Then on Monday, he would chip in 7 points during the team’s regular season finale, as the Redhawks had a chance in the closing seconds but fell to a strong Stoneham team, 61-57.
So the career point total now stands at 1,009.
“It’s been a lot of fun coaching Parker, just tremendous,” said Amesbury coach Tom Comeau. “He’s a competitor and he plays hard, and obviously he’s been our leading scorer for a while. So it’s been a lot of fun.”
Now, everyone is praying that his career total will keep rising.
But first, it’s important to go back and admire the journey.
After Keliher graduated following the 2022 season (and moved on to play for Endicott College), the Amesbury program was really turned over to a pair of then-freshmen guards in DeLong and Justin Dube. The duo pretty much immediately became the program’s starting backcourt and leaders, and have been going strong side-by-side over the last four years.
For DeLong, though, the scoring took a bit.
He finished with just over 100 total points as a freshman, but bumped up to averaging 9.8 ppg (just under 200 total points for the year) as a sophomore. So basic math said that DeLong needed around 700 points over his last two seasons to hit the milestone, and he helped himself out last winter as a junior when he poured in 280 total points for a team-high 14.0 ppg average. It was a season that saw him named both a Second Team CAL All-Star, as well as a Daily News All-Star.
But this year, it’s been a whole different level.
DeLong is having a top-3 scoring season that the area has seen this decade, averaging 22.7 ppg with 41 3s at the last check of our area scoring leaders that ran last Friday. He exploded for a career-high 36 points in a win over Notre Dame Cristo Rey, had 33 in a close loss to Ipswich, 29 in a win over Triton, 27 and 26 in two wins over Rockport, and another 27 in a win over Hamilton-Wenham.
“I doubted myself for sure,” said DeLong. “After freshman year I only had just over 100 points or something like that, so getting 900 is a lot in three years. But this year, starting the year I only had around 560, so I knew I had to average a lot to get it done. But I was able to do what most people dream of doing, so I’m proud of myself for that.”
But there’s also something else Amesbury hasn’t done since the “Keliher Era.”
… Make the playoffs (a fact that makes DeLong’s milestone more impressive).
It’s been a three-year postseason drought filled with heartbreak. Two seasons ago, Amesbury finished just two spots out of the Division 4 field at No. 34 in the final rankings. Then last year, the Redhawks were again right on the “bubble” finishing at No. 36 — and neither season reached the 10-win barrier that automatically gets teams into the playoffs via the .500 rule.
Flash forward to today, and here we go again.
When the latest Division 4 rankings came out on Friday morning, Amesbury was the “last team in” the field at No. 32. The Redhawks (8-12) have since followed with a six-point loss to Lynnfield (No. 22 in D3), that victory over Whittier Tech, and now Monday’s close four-point loss to Stoneham (No. 24 in D3).
Will that all be enough to keep Amesbury in?
For a senior class of DeLong, Dube, Peters, Joe Celia, Chase Linsey, Ryan Baker and Noah Snyder who have all been through so much together, proper justice says they deserve at least one playoff game in their high school careers, right?
“All the seniors know what it feels like to be in that (bubble) spot,” said DeLong. “But, you know, this year I think we finally got our spot in the playoffs. I hope we get there and can prove a couple of people wrong.”
They certainly would be a dangerous team to face.
Led by Dube (20 pts) and Linsey (18 pts) on Monday, Amesbury had a chance with under 10 seconds left, but a potential game-tying shot was off the mark and Stoneham was able to ice the game with free throws. Still, the Redhawks have closed the regular season with close losses to CAL leaders like Lynnfield and Newburyport, while earning convincing wins over Whittier Tech, Rockport and Notre Dame Cristo Rey.
Plain and simple: The Redhawks are playing their best basketball right now.
Which explains why they’ve moved from outside of the projected Division 4 field basically all year, to currently inside of it. Then when you also consider that DeLong, Dube, Celia, Peters and Baker were all just off a grueling football season — that ended in the Division 7 State Championship game — you can understand why it was a slower start to hoops.
Half the team literally had just five practices between the end of football, and their first basketball game.
But now, this team is ready to show what it can do in the playoffs.
… And this senior class deserves that chance.
“We’re playing really good basketball right now,” said Comeau. “You know, they came out of football season all banged up, and it took us a while to get into basketball-mode. It takes a good month to get into basketball shape, and nevermind you’re getting the *expletive* beat out of you on the football field. You go all of the way down to Foxborough playing for a State Championship, then you come back and you’re suppose to have a basketball game in four days. But now they’re in it and are competing hard.
“If someone draws us in the tournament, I wouldn’t be too excited if I were them.”
Stoneham 61, Amesbury 57
Stoneham (61): Liam MacPhee 4-2-12, Weston Bunnell 4-0-8, Tony Dean 12-3-27, Mason Lord 5-1-12, Peter Boccelli 1-0-2, Gavin Robinson 0-0-0. Totals 26-6-61
Amesbury (57): Justin Dube 8-0-20, Joe Celia 2-1-6, Parker DeLong 3-1-7, Ollie Peters 2-0-4, Chase Linsey 7-2-18, Ryan Baker 1-0-2. Totals 23-4-57
3-pointers: S — MacPhee 2, Lord; A — Dube 4, Linsey 2, Celia
Stoneham (12-8): 27 34 — 61
Amesbury (8-12): 22 35 — 57