In the final seconds of a win-or-go-home district tournament game some years ago, Snake River needed a bucket. With the score tied 48-48, Snake River coach Jeff Steadman knew it.

So did Marsh Valley, which is why the Eagles angled their coverage towards senior Snake River star Kelsey Higginson.

So, in just his second year as the Panthers’ head coach, Steadman gambled.

Instead of running a play for Higginson, Snake River got the ball to freshman Josee Steadman, who drove upcourt, got fouled and made two free throws to give the Panthers a 50-48 win.

Of course, for Jeff Steadman, it wasn’t much of a gamble, and it wasn’t the first mark of precociousness his daughter had shown.

In elementary school, Josee would wake up at 5 a.m. with her sister Sari, and her grandmother would drive the two of them to the church gym to shoot 100 free throws before school.

In fourth grade, she walked into AAU tryouts for a new team that Courtnie Smith was putting together — “she was about a foot taller than every other person there,” Smith recalled. The team, with Josee, Smith’s daughter Tenleigh, and a who’s who of other top girls basketball players in the area — Century’s Preslie Merrill, Highland’s Meghan Calley, Marsh Valley’s Zoie Armstrong — would go on to win tournaments across the West.

By seventh grade, Josee was getting summer runs with the Snake River varsity.

Steadman’s whole career has been defined by that precociousness — capped by her signing with Colorado Mesa University on Thursday.

At every step in her career, she’s been ahead of her peers — playing up in age, making four straight All-Area teams, scoring her 1,000th point as a junior. She set the record for most 3-pointers made at a 3A state tournament last year as a junior.

With four sisters, three older than her, who all started playing basketball — even if they didn’t continue through high school — she comes by it honestly.

“I always thought it would be fun to have enough kids to have a basketball team. I just didn’t figure it would be a girls basketball team,” Jeff Steadman said.

All the Steadman girls — in order, Jessica, Sari, Katie, Josee and Jackie — learned the value of hard work thanks partly to their father’s contracting company, Steadman Construction Inc.

“Everybody works, and I think it just helped me learn how to work hard,” Josee Steadman said. “I remember one time when I was little, my dad gave me a job to rake grass before they could lay the sod. I’m pretty sure I did a pretty bad job, but he taught us to work hard and I think that was really important.”

On the court, Josee played up from a young age, tagging along with Sari, four years older, and her friends.

It’s the easiest way to develop. Compete with older players, and when you’re dropped into your own age bracket, you’ll stand out even more. The experience gave Josee the confidence that she needed to come into a winning program like Snake River as a freshman and create clutch moments like her winning free throws against Marsh Valley.

“I think a lot of times when a freshman comes in, the older girls have a problem with it,” Josee said. “But they were kind of all expecting that because I’d been playing with them over the summer. I’d played a lot with them, so I wasn’t really nervous at all coming in and it helped my confidence a lot.”

And when Higginson graduated after that freshman year, Josee had the confidence to be the star as a sophomore. Over the years, she’s been everything from a post player to a point guard to a sharpshooter for Snake River.

Blackfoot coach Raimee Odum has her own Josee Steadman stories. A star herself at Blackfoot before playing for Air Force, Odum has been coaching Steadman privately for the last few years.

Instead of having her do workouts with other girls, Odum more often finds herself putting Steadman in groups with boys to play one-on-one.

After all, what else can you do with a player who’s been so far ahead her entire career?

“I’ve always been pretty confident,” Josee said. “Whenever I’d go play with older kids, I’d just try to stick with what I know how to do and played good hard defense and scoring eventually came. ... I’ve always been really determined and one of those people that wants to stick with whatever I’m doing and do the best I can with it.”