Cigi McCollin will not head back overseas, but not because she isn’t good enough.
The former Hofstra and Christ the King star spent the last three seasons playing professionally abroad in Puerto Rico, Italy and Spain. McCollin said agent issues and the world’s struggling economy have dried up opportunities for non-stars.
“It’s not that I can’t go back,” the 5-foot-7 guard said. “It’s just that opportunities are few and far between because of the economy all over. The thing that breaks my heart is that it is not that I can’t continue to play. It’s just the opportunity and just knowing the right people.”
McCollin showed her skills on the city’s blacktop this summer. Her Brooklyn Express team won the Uptown Challenge and lost in the semifinals of EBC Rucker and West 4th. She nearly pulled her squad back from a double-digit deficit against No Limit at the Nike Tournament of Champions at Gauchos Gym in The Bronx on Saturday with her deadly long-range stroke. McCollin scored all 20 of her points in the second half and connected on four 3-pointers.
“We expected Cigi to go off,” said No Limit forward Danielle Chambers, who has played against McCollin since high school. “She has gotten better, more accurate.”
McCollin won two New York Sate Federation titles at Christ the King and was one of the best players in Hoftra history. She is fourth on the school’s all-time scoring list with 1,662 points and the school’s leader in 3-pointers made with 291. The Pride went 26-8 in her senior season of 2007, when they made their second straight WNIT appearance. She averaged 14.1 points per game and shot just over 34 percent from behind the arc that year.
“We made a lot of history there,” McCollin said. “We didn’t go as far as we wanted to go, but just being able to do that from the ground up [was special].”
She realizes her playing days, at least professionally, appear to be over. But that’s OK. McCollin is in the process of securing a job teaching seventh-grade Social Studies at a charter school in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn. She wants to get into the routine of her new life because she is serious about coaching.
She has coached with the New York City Warriors AAU team the last two seasons and also with the Long Island Lightning’s sixth-grade squad. McCollin said she has inquired with Christ the King coaches Bob Mackey and Jill Cook about any coaching opportunities that may be out there.
“You got to have patience coaching,” she said. “I never realized that side of it and how much patience coaches have.”
McCollin said she isn’t going to rush into anything and wants to take the next stage of his life one step at a time.
“That’s kind of why I started doing AAU,” she said. “I was trying to get a feel for it. I’m still going to try to stick it out.”