Don Lippi refuses to lose
ALAMEDA, Calif. (BVM) — Don Lippi, 74, recently became the fourth high school boys basketball coach in California state history to reach the milestone of 900 career wins thanks to his Saint Joseph Notre Dame (SJND) team’s 56-37 victory against Alameda city rival Encinal High School.
This historic achievement on May 15 reflects Coach Lippi’s success throughout his 42 years of coaching high school basketball at St. Patrick-St. Vincent (Vallejo), Skyline High (Oakland), St. Ignatius (San Francisco), and now SJND where he has coached since 2003. As of May 17, Lippi’s record was 900-283. He has also won four state championships, with the most recent triumph coming in the 2015-16 season when he coached an SJND team that had two freshmen playing important roles to victory in the title game.
Lippi’s coaching journey has been quite impressive, especially considering the circumstances in which he first coached a team. He began coaching in 1968 in Vietnam where he was working in the engineer battalion after enlisting.
“I got together a basketball team and built a basketball court as there was going to be a tournament between the US, Korea and Vietnam,” Lippi said. “All these guys came wanting to try out and we ended up beating Korea, Nam, Army and Navy to win the whole thing. Our team name was the Soul Brothers Plus One as it was 11 African Americans and myself (the coach and point guard). I had never lived with African Americans before so I got to learn their culture and that was when MLK was killed. They respected me and I learned a lot about basketball.”
His coaching career then took off once he failed to make the basketball team at SF State after returning from Vietnam. He recalled that the team’s coach encouraged him to get into coaching because of his knowledge of the game.
Throughout Lippi’s decades of coaching, he has met and positively influenced the lives of a myriad of young men. To Lippi, the 900 wins are just surface level. What matters more to him is how he can help his players win at life.
“Winning games is really fun, and it is especially nice to see people who coached with you comment on how it impacted them,” Lippi said. “Yet, there are different ways that you can impact kids in sports, not just winning … I have been at schools where I became a father figure. I hope that I have 10,000 wins referring to the number of kids.”
Reflecting on his long career, Lippi just completed writing a book titled What It’s Like to Have 5,000 Children which explores what students he coached are doing now. He has spent this past year contacting former players and is currently reviewing the book with his son and exploring opportunities to publish it.
His success at SJND is remarkable given its small size and limited facilities compared to other schools. For instance, Lippi mentioned that SJND doesn’t have its own track, swimming pool or theatre, yet the school has been able to achieve success in sports and find ways to produce theatrical productions at other venues. For many years at SJND, Lippi taught AP Government in addition to his duties as the boys basketball coach. However, he revealed that he retired from teaching at the start of the pandemic because he is not a computer person and teaching virtually was affecting his health.
A key reason why Lippi has been able to have so much success at SJND and throughout his career is because of his desire and ability to get his players to play harder than they think they can play and “refuse to lose.” For instance, he gave the example of SJND’s 2009 NorCal championship game against Branson in which SJND was down by the score of 53-34 with three minutes left in the game. Yet, after Lippi yelled “refuse to lose” during a timeout, his players went crazy and wound up winning the game on a buzzer-beater. Lippi mentioned his high standards, saying that he has only seen one team play like a 10 in terms of rating effort on a scale of 1-10.
While Lippi is aware that he is getting older, his desire and joy of coaching still remain. He is excited by the fact that his son, Dominic, the director of operations for St. Mary’s College men’s basketball team, wants to get into coaching. Lippi suggested that he would leave his post at SJND to help his son if he gets a coaching job. Ultimately, Lippi thinks that there will be a message that tells him it’s time to stop coaching. Until then, he will continue winning games and changing lives through his passion, skills, huge heart, and refusal to lose.
