Women's college basketball: Iona officially introduces Angelika Szumilo as new coach
Just as the Iona men's basketball program did a month ago in hiring former Fairleigh Dickinson coach Tobin Anderson, the women's basketball program also looked to the Knights for its successor.
On Monday afternoon, the Gaels officially introduced Angelika Szumilo as their new head coach, replacing Billi Chambers who recently took the women's basketball head coaching job at Xavier.
"Iona has always been on my radar," Szumilo said, alluding to her experiences either playing or coaching at nearby colleges. "I heard a lot of great things about Iona University, not just recently, but over the years. Obviously, when it became an option and an opportunity, I just had to go after it. I'm a very big family person, and if I didn't get that feeling, I'm just not going to go for something I don't feel good about.
"When I stepped on campus, and the people I met and the random students in the dining hall, everyone was so welcoming. I loved that part. I really do think you can accomplish a lot of great things when it's a family-type of environment."
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Szumilo arrives at Iona, after making her head coaching debut at Fairleigh Dickinson, where she spent the last four years coaching the Knights.
The Knights saw massive improvements each year. They went 8-22 overall prior to her arrival, and they finished .500 in league play and earned their first NEC Tournament victory since 1992 in her first season in 2019-20.
Fairleigh Dickinson won back-to-back NEC regular season titles in each of Szumilo's last two years, and she was named the conference coach of the year twice.
She went 72-45 overall, and 50-20 in conference play throughout her four-year tenure with the Knights.
Before that, Szumilo was an associate head coach at Fordham from 2011-19 and witnessed the Rams capture two Atlantic 10 championships. She also held previous assistant coaching positions at Monmouth and LIU Brooklyn.
She was also a two-sport athlete at LIU and starred in both basketball and lacrosse.
"We love Billi Chambers so much, and we're so thankful for her that we couldn't be anything but happy for her to have this big opportunity to take a step forward in her career and kill it there," Iona guard Thoranna Hodge-Carr said. "I think it's just a new beginning for all of us, and we're just excited for the future, just to work hard and be better."
Iona is coming off of a historic season, which culminated in the Lady Gaels' second NCAA Tournament appearance in program history.
For the first time ever, they captured both MAAC regular season and tournament titles in the same year. The Gaels went 26-7 this past season, and Szumilo hopes to build off of this success moving forward.
"We'll continue the success and our winning ways going forward," Szumilo said. "We want to be one of the top teams in our conference, not just one year, not just two years, but do that every single year and continue to compete for championships every single year. We can do that by striving towards excellence in everything we do, not just on the court but more importantly in the classroom and how we evolve as women."
Szumilo has already started to get to know some of her new players. They've conducted workouts and meetings over the last week.
"There's a lot of new stuff, it's a different game, but I feel like our team is gonna fit really well," Iona guard Natalia Otkhmezuri said. "I love also how she approaches basketball in general, and the way she's thinking about basketball. She's just really nice, a really hard worker and I appreciate that and I can't wait to see how it's going to go this season."
Szumilo hopes to instill a high-energy style of play and hustle on the court. She also hopes to tighten the team's bonds with one another and have the team over-communicate.
While she's excited to get going with the Gaels, she doesn't plan on getting ahead of herself.
"Take it one day at a time, don't get too high and don't get too low," Szumilo said of the biggest lesson she learned in her first head coaching role at Fairleigh Dickinson. "Just like basketball is a game of runs, leading a program is also a game of runs with highs and lows. I'm a big believer that it's critical to stay together through the downs, because if we all go in different directions because of some adversity, are we really a program? Are we really a team?
"Part of building a culture is installing that mentality. It's easy to be rah-rah and love each other when things are going well. In my first year, we started off 0-7 and lost a lot of close games, and that was challenging from a personal perspective, but we really stayed together. The biggest thing is work hard, outwork people, don't worry about anything else other than what you can control and everything will fall into place when the right time comes."
Follow Eugene Rapay on Twitter at @erapay5 and on Instagram at @byeugenerapay.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Women's college basketball: Iona tabs Angelika Szumilo as new coach
