The honor caps his time as the youngest son in the state’s most-storied basketball family — and it comes in a year that marks the 25th anniversary of his father’s death. 

By Jacob Miller-Arsenault

For Bernie Cieplicki Jr., being named to Vermont’s high school sports hall of fame means more than the wood-framed parchment he’ll receive next month. 

The honor caps off his time as the youngest son in the state’s most-storied basketball family — a weight he carried through his standout career at Rice Memorial in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. It also comes in a year that marks the 25th anniversary of his father’s death. 

Bernie Cieplicki Sr., himself a member of the Vermont Principals’ Association Hall of Fame, grew up playing basketball in Jersey City and attended St. Michael’s College on a basketball scholarship. After college, he started the perennial powerhouse boys’ basketball program at Rice nearly 60 years ago, winning three state championships and over 300 games in his 18-year tenure, topping an 80% win rate. The program has since evolved into a dynasty the younger Bernie Cieplicki compared to the New York Yankees. 

“If you like the Yankees, you want the Yankees to win or the Red Sox to lose,” he said. “With Rice, it doesn’t matter who you are, the first question you ask is did Rice win or did they lose? And you’re either happy or sad. This has been going on for 60 years since he started the program.” 

When Bernie Jr. first picked up a basketball, his dad was right there to coach him, from first through seventh grade. “The only years I never played for a family member (were) eighth grade and college,” he said.  

That afforded young Cieplicki certain privileges. “He had keys to a gym and he had somebody to coach him, so it worked out well for him from that perspective,” said Kevin Cieplicki, one of Bernie’s older brothers who coached him in high school and is a member of the Hall of Fame himself. 

The Cieplicki patriarch demanded excellence from his namesake. “The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement,” went a favorite saying. Whenever the younger Cieplicki struggled, his dad was on him. 

“I had to be in third grade, going into halftime I missed like four free throws in a row. We’re walking into halftime, and he looks at me and goes, ‘Why don’t you give me your uniform? We should burn your uniform ‘cause you stink right now,’” Bernie Jr. said. 

Tough as those early lessons may have been, the youngest Cieplicki appreciated them come high school. He played for Kevin and another older brother, Keith. The two drilled him into discipline. “Keith and I coached him for four years in high school,” Kevin said. “We’d coach him during the game, we’d be on his case all night, we’d go home — then my dad would have his turn.”  

“I think it was a lot harder for him than it was for us,” said Keith, who like his brothers and father belongs to the principals’ association’s hall of fame. “He worked at it, he was humble, and for having your brother as a coach, he actually listened.” 

Bernie Jr. turned star the moment he put on his Rice uniform, excelling in part thanks to the addition of the three-point line in high school basketball during the late ‘80s. He never won a championship, but he showed up on the biggest stages, dropping 35 points in Rice’s semifinal berths in both 1990 and 1991. By the time he graduated in 1991, winning the inaugural Burlington Free Press Mr. Basketball en route, he was the program’s all-time leading scorer with more than 2,000 points, surpassing Keith, who was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in 1985 and is arguably the greatest basketball player to ever come out of Vermont.  

Bernie Jr. started his college career at Fairfield University before transferring to the University of Vermont to play under Tom Brennan, the only coach to have ever brought the Cats past the first round in March Madness.

Cieplicki’s precocious athleticism from an early age stood out to Brennan, a close family friend. Brennan first saw it while visiting the Cieplickis’ home in 1977 to recruit Keith to the College of William & Mary, where he was coaching at the time. “(Bernie was) the best third-grade athlete I ever saw,” Brennan said. “For a third-grader, he can catch, run and throw.” 

Soon the two would grow close playing catch and wiffle ball in Bernie Jr.’s backyard. Occasionally Brennan would drive the boy over to Winooski for milkshakes.  

When it came time for Cieplicki to decide on where he’d play in college, Brennan was all in on him coming to Vermont. But Cieplicki shocked him by choosing to go away to Fairfield. But a year later, Cieplicki asked to come home. 

“In my heart of hearts, I knew he would come back,” Brennan said. “He came back, and it was like he never left.” 

Brennan became a mentor to Cieplicki, who described the coach as “one of the greatest influences I’ve ever had that’s not a family member in terms of teaching me about life and about fortitude.”  

Fortitude was a recurring theme in Cieplicki’s UVM days in the mid-1990s. The program was far from the established regional juggernaut it is now, and it grappled with more difficult competition than the team’s current America East Conference provides. 

Back then, UVM played in the North Atlantic Conference, an earlier iteration of America East. The league featured teams such as Delaware, Drexel, Boston University and Hofstra, and it was populated by figures like player Malik Rose, who would go on to win two NBA titles with the San Antonio Spurs, and Jay Wright, who coached at Hofstra before embarking on a dazzling career at Villanova.  

“We were the foundation because we had to survive the struggles,” Cieplicki said.   

Cieplicki honed his craft in college, becoming an elite three-point specialist — shooting around 40% from beyond the arc during his time at UVM. “I just knew I had to be good at something because I wasn’t very athletic,” he said. “If you don’t make shots, what good are you if you’re not athletic? So you have to find one trait that you are really good at, and that was shooting the basketball.”  

Said Kevin: “Bernie was a great shooter, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. He could shoot the lights out, and he worked hard.”

Scores of dedicated basketball players will go out each day and shoot a bunch of shots. The distinction for Cieplicki? “My brothers would tell me to go out and make 500 shots,” he said. 

By sinking 3,000 shots per week, Bernie Jr. shifted from a shot taker to a shot maker. He made 228 career threes for the Cats, good for sixth all time. “(My brothers) were always there for a word of encouragement, and there to keep it real too,” he said.  

The Cieplicki brothers bonded by being outside and shooting together in the driveway. “He was in a tough spot because being 10 years younger, for a long time I made him my rebounder,” said Keith. “And then all of a sudden the tables turned and he got better than me.”    

Even when the shots weren’t falling, Cieplicki’s toughness stood out. Brennan recalled one game at the University of New Hampshire when the Catamounts were down by 27 with 10 minutes to go. Brennan had already given up. “I was planning for the next game,” he said. 

But Cieplicki led the Cats on an inspired comeback, aggressively attacking the basket and getting to the free-throw line. “It was funny because he didn’t make a three,” Brennan said. “I thought he had to make some shots (for us) to come back.” 

As a broadcast analyst in recent years, Cieplicki has continued to cover the Catamounts, an opportunity he cherishes. “I get to be the biggest fan for a program that I love,” he said. “It’s so much fun to stay around and be involved and have contact with the coaches and players.” 

The program has flourished under current coach John Becker, nationally recognized as one of college basketball’s best-kept secrets. “Now the expectation is you gotta get to the round of 32 or the round of 16 and you gotta win the league,” Cieplicki said. 

“What frustrates me is when people complain about one game,” he said, citing the impulsive reactions of a fanbase that has grown accustomed to winning. He added, however, that this instant-gratification environment is a credit to what Becker and Brennan worked so hard to build. “It’s fun to be that voice of reason,” he said. 

With his playing days behind him, Cieplicki, now 51 and living in Colchester, remains an avid fan and student of the game. He still cheers for UVM and his high school alma mater, where he served for over a decade as an athletic director.

“There is nothing more prideful than what Rice has done in the last two decades,” he said.

It helps that his family legacy has kept going along the way: Each of his kids won a championship with Rice, too.

The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.