After spending the last two years at Mercer University as a graduate assistant, former Dartmouth star Cy Lippold will be returning to the Ancient Eight as an assistant coach at Columbia.
The Bronx native, who was IHO’s Most Improved Player in 2017-2018 and Honorable Mention in 2018-2019, will be assisting with development of the guards as well as scouting, team strategy, recruiting operations and analytics, according to Columbia Athletics.
“We are thrilled to welcome Cy to the Columbia women’s basketball family,” coach Megan Griffith said. “Her strong background in leadership development and firsthand experience as an Ivy student-athlete are unmatched. I am confident she will make an immediate impact on our program.”
The two-time Academic All-Ivy selection made it into the starting lineup in her junior year and proceeded to start 49 of her last 50 games. She had solid numbers for the Big Green over her career, averaging 7.6 points and 3.2 assists per contest, but her biggest influence on the program was her toughness and leadership.
Ivy fans may remember the rugged 5′ 2″ point guard going up to try and block an uncontested breakaway layup by Princeton’s 6′ 5″ Bella Alarie on Feb. 16, 2019. As she lay on the court with what turned out to be a torn ACL, most people thought that her senior year was over. Somehow, Lippold found a way to come back and play 27 minutes over the last two games of the season. Despite her valiant efforts, Dartmouth lost to Cornell on Senior Night, 57-47, and just missed a chance to get its first-ever appearance in the Ivy Tournament.
The Big Green’s on-court coach, who spent many hours with her head coach Belle Koclanes reviewing game films, preparing practices and creating scouting reports, went onto that season’s Final Four to be a part of the “So You Want To Be A Coach” program by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WCBA). A few months later, she chose to go to Mercer for a master’s degree in education.
After a challenging 8-23 season in 2019-2020, the Bears bounced back with a 19-7 record in 2020-2021 (a completely different type of challenging season). Mercer, the #2 seed in the Southern Conference at 10-3, went on the win the league tournament and secure a bid to the NCAA Tournament. Their time in the bubble, however, was short-lived due to a 79-53 loss to #1 seed and eventual Final Four participant South Carolina.
Lippold’s success at Mercer and her new position at Columbia wouldn’t surprise her former teammates or coach.
“She’s going be very similar to coach [Koclanes] in the sense that she’s going respect her team really well and try to teach them as people and not as subordinates,” former Dartmouth player and present Olympian Isalys Quiñones told The Dartmouth in the winter of 2019. “I think this is what she’s meant to do, and I know that she’ll love it.”
“The smallest player on the floor going up against one of the most talented players in the country. Cy goes airborne to do everything in her power to stop Bella from getting a layup. It’s a testimony to who Cy Lippold is as a person,” Koclanes said of that fateful night against the Tigers on the Feb. 28, 2019 edition of Inside Ivy Hoops. “She was in a lot of pain and she was just holding on tight. She just wanted to know if it was all worth it.”
“Everything Cy does is worth it,” Koclanes continued. “It’s never for Cy, it’s always for the benefit of the team and the program, and that’s why she’s going to be a phenomenal coach – because coaching is not about you, it’s about everyone else. You have to be selfless to be an excellent coach and she understands that already.”