April 4, 2007
BY MIKE UNGER
Having fallen tantalizingly short of achieving the program's signature win, the AU women's basketball team walked off the Hart Center floor dejected and defeated.
But all was not lost.
In mounting a late-season surge during which they gained a measure of consistency that had eluded them all year, and in an inspiring run to the Patriot League Tournament championship game, the Eagles laid a strong foundation for future successes and sent notice that they now are a team to be reckoned with.
But the bitterly close loss at the hands of Holy Cross earlier this month in Worcester, Mass., did mark the end of the line for Abby Lipskis, one of the team's two seniors. Her collegiate career spanned five years in which she played at two different schools, for three different head coaches. It wasn't always easy, yet Lipskis endured, and this season she emerged as one of the team's leaders, playing a central part in AU's
maturation.
If AU does indeed build on this year's near miss and goes on to win its first-ever Patriot League title next season, make no mistake about it: Abby Lipskis will have played a key role.
"Abby is the most team-first player I've ever coached, and that's the highest compliment I can pay a player," Coach Melissa McFerrin said.
Lipskis's path to AU was a circuitous one. Always a tall kid enamored with basketball, she grew up in Norfolk, Va., where she staged epic battles on the court with her three brothers. It was at a high school basketball camp--ironically, held at AU--where Lipskis caught the eye of Rhode Island University's coach. She was offered a scholarship and packed her bags for New England.
Homesick and unhappy with the northeast's cold weather, Lipskis clashed with her coach off the court, and midway through her sophomore year decided to transfer.
"I knew I wanted to go to a better [academic] school, and I wanted to find one closer to home," she says. "I wanted to stay [Division I] because I knew I could do the work and I liked the competition. We looked at American as a team that could win the league while I was there."
After sitting out the second half of the 2003-04 season due to NCAA transfer regulations, Lipskis was thrown another curveball: the coach she came to AU to play for, Shann Hart, was out, and McFerrin was in.
Once again, Lipskis--and the entire AU program--would have to start from square one.
"I think any team really struggles with a big coaching change," she says. "At one point I had been through three different systems in two years. You have to kind of learn the game through their eyes all over again."
Lipskis showed steady improvement through her sophomore and junior seasons, while the team strained for all-too-rare wins. This year looked like it would be much of the same until Army came calling on Feb. 13.
"Previously we had been up and down, we didn't know how people were going to come out to play," she says. "We knew in our hearts that we could beat any team in the league, but the Army game we played together as a team. Everyone had a good game, there wasn't any one person who stood out. It was a really fun game to play because everyone was playing together. It was the optimal team environment. Beating the second place team we really proved it to ourselves."
Infused with confidence, the Eagles knocked off Navy and Colgate in the Patriot League Tournament to advance to the title game at Holy Cross, a 10-time league champion. Up by 10 at halftime, AU faltered late and dropped a 56-48 heartbreaker.
"It hurts every time I think about it," she says. "But I was very proud of the way we played. The whole tournament everyone was putting in their effort, playing their role. If you look at every year Melissa's been here, you can see the growth of each individual player and also the team. This year our problem was we weren't consistent enough. Next year I think that will smooth out."
An international business major minoring in German, Lipskis, scheduled to graduate in May, already is looking for marketing jobs. Regardless of what the future holds for her, she knows she'll always have her basketball memories.
"Even when you're going through the worst days ever, it was something I knew was worth going through," she says of her playing career. "I've learned so much about every aspect of life. Interacting with all different types of people. Teamwork, leadership, time management, I can apply so much of what I learned to a job. Every bad thing along with every good thing shapes you.
"I'll miss playing. You can always go out on the courts and play pick-up, but it won't be the same because it won't be the same girls. Me and [fellow senior Jessica Tenuta] talk all the time that the year has come and gone, and even though we hated it at times we're really going to miss it. We want the girls to know that we'll always be there for them. The experience is irreplaceable."
As is the indelible impact Lipskis has left on her team.
