The Ithaca College women’s basketball team head coach Dan Raymond announced March 25 that he will retire at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. Raymond has been at the helm of the team since 2000.
During his time with the Bombers, Raymond led them to the NCAA Division III Championship 17 times, including quarterfinals appearances in 2019 and 2014. The team secured 12 conference titles, 18 20-plus win seasons and a .741 win percentage under Raymond.
Raymond also accrued personal accolades, with eight Conference Coach of the Year and three Regional Coach of the Year awards. He is the longest tenured and winningest coach in program history.
Raymond sat down with Staff Writer Isabella McSweeney to talk about his career and plans for the future.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Isabella McSweeney: After 17 NCAA Championship appearances and coaching seven All-Americans, what has it been like to be part of such a strong, competitive program?
Dan Raymond: This is just part of what I was supposed to do, it was the expectations that I set for myself, the players and the program, and they bought into what we were trying to sell. It ended up working out well. Once you create a successful program standard, then the student-athletes themselves are the ones that carry that forward and uphold the bar. You always try to reset it a little bit higher, higher and higher, and that’s what happened. As far as my role in that, it was just making sure that everybody that I was trying to recruit came in with the understanding that you’re coming into a place that expects success and that success doesn’t just happen. It happens because you work for it and you earn it. The players that set that bar before you are the ones that are looking over your shoulder and making sure that it happens.
IM: Did you see your mindset toward the team and team culture evolve over time?
DR: I say this to people all the time: I was a dad before I was a coach. I have three daughters, all grown now. So, if you want to call it the culture, the environment was all about family. I feel like I coached like I was a parent. As my daughters grew, I had to evolve as a parent. The same thing happened with my coaching.
IM: Did you learn anything from the players as you worked with them?
DR: It was a shared experience, as far as knowledge, wisdom and information. It was a two-way conversation. The way that I ran my program wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a dictatorship. Certain players got to the point where they felt very comfortable sharing things with me, and I was almost more like a father figure than a coach, which I appreciated. I felt, at least for those players, my objective was being met. They trusted me.
IM: Are there any particular memories with the team that have stood out and stuck with you?
DR: I joke about this, some of the most memorable times that we’ve had were some of the worst bus trips we had. We’re in a closed setting, and didn’t have anything else to do, so we were together and made the best of it. There’s a number of those that could go a whole chapter in my book.
IM: Did you know going into this season that it would be your last with the team?
DR: Because of where I was at in my career, in my life, it’s something that I considered, but I had no intent on retiring after this season. But as the season got progressing, one of the most important things that happened to me was that I had some health issues, and when I was reflecting with my wife during those times, there are so many other things that she and I want to accomplish in our lives, and at this point, we better get started if we want to be able to do them. It was just one of those things where a number of factors happened that I didn’t predict, and they led me to the decision. I’m very comfortable with the decision that I’ve made.
IM: What are you looking forward to in retirement?
DR: There are so many different things. More time with our family; we have a total of eight grandchildren, so we want to be more part of their lives. What we would like to be able to do is take a road trip to see some of our alums, where they are and what they’re doing at this point in their lives — all the players that I still consider a part of my family. There’s also a bucket list thing that I have of going to every major league baseball stadium. Right now, my wife and I are just taking it a step at a time. We don’t have anything huge planned right away because this is a new experience for us.
IM: What message do you want the team to take forward under its new head coach?
DR: Be open, be receptive, be willing to adapt and make the changes that are going to obviously occur, but don’t ever let the standard that has been set by the program itself be anything less than the expectations of being excellent and being successful.
