VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

(Photo credit William and Mary Athletics)

Burlington

Basketball

Inducted 2013

A member of one of Vermont’s foremost basketball families, Keith Cieplicki was the first Vermont high school player to score over 2,000 career points (2,049) and was a two-time Vermont high school athlete of the year playing for his father Bernie Cieplicki, Sr. at Rice Memorial High School, graduating in 1981.

In addition to leading the state in scoring over his four-year career, he led the Little Indians to the 1980 Vermont Division I state title in the first of back-to-back trips to the championship game. He also was the most valuable player in the 1981 Alhambra Vermont-New Hampshire All-Star Game.

Highly recruited at Rice, he went on to excel at William & Mary graduating in 1985, where he was a two-time first team all-ECAC South guard and a three-time Academic All-American. Cieplicki helped the Tribe to a 20-8 record in 1982-83, its first 20-win season since 1951 and the school's first-ever National Invitation Tournament bid. The sharp-shooting guard  ranked fourth all-time at William & Mary in career scoring (1,812), 11th in scoring average (16.0 ppg), second in field goal shooting (54.1%) and third in free-throw shooting (82.4%).  He was a seventh-round draft choice of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1985, the most recent of any Vermont high school product, and finished his playing career with Athletes in Action. 

He later served as the Rice boy's hoop coach and was the head women's basketball coach at the University of Vermont and Syracuse University. He led the Catamounts to the America East crown and a NCAA tournament bid in 2000 and a conference regular season title and trip to the WNIT Quarterfinals in 2002.

Cieplicki, whose jersey #14 has been retired at both Rice and William & Mary, is a member of the New England Basketball Hall of Fame, the Rice Memorial Athletic Hall of Fame and the William and Mary Athletic Hall of Fame. In 1999, Sports Illustrated selected Cieplicki 48th in its list of the Top 50 Vermont athletes of the 20th Century.