Thursday, March 20, 2025
A former West Hempstead basketball star passed away in December in Florida. Mike Cingiser passed away on Dec. 18, 2024 at the age of 84.
“He lived a really splendid life,” shared his daughter, Karen Cingiser. “He was such a good human. It was pretty incredible, the impact he had on people.”
Cingiser was born in Manhattan on Sept. 23, 1940, but he lived in Queens, before his family moved to Malverne Oaks South while he was in elementary school.
While attending West Hempstead High School Cingiser led the Rams to the 1957 Nassau title. He was named tournament MVP, scoring 38 points in the semifinals and 24 in the championship game as a junior.
As a senior, Cingiser received the Carl Molusky Award as the South Shore Athletic League’s top player.
Cingiser graduated from West Hempstead in 1958 as the program’s all time leading scorer, with 1,185 points. He was a two-time first-team All-Nassau County basketball selection, as well as an honorable-mention all-county baseball player and a first singles tennis player.
Cingiser attended Brown University, where he played for the university basketball team, the Bears, for three years following his time on the freshman team.
In all three of his varsity seasons, Cingiser was named First Team All-Ivy League with the Bears. He graduated as Brown’s leading scorer after scoring 1,331 points. Cingiser averaged 17.8 points per game, ranking tied for fourth in program history.
“He had a reputation of being extremely competitive,” said Russ Tyler, Brown Bear alumni and color commentator for their games. “From what I understand, he could score the ball, take it to the basket, hit jump shots and then score the ball from deep. He was a great rebounder.”
While in school, Cingiser won a gold pedal for the United States at the 1961 Maccabiah Games, playing alongside Larry Brown.
Cingiser received an English degree from Brown University in 1962. That same year he was selected in the ninth round of the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics but decided to pursue coaching and teaching instead.
Cingiser was inducted in the Brown Athletic hall of fame in 1971.
“He may be Brown’s greatest player ever,” Tyler added.
In 1962, Cingiser married Marjan Sann. The two met in the late 50’s while working as counselors at a day camp located in Plainview.
Soon after Cingiser’s graduation, they moved onto Long Island, eventually settling in Lynbrook. Cingiser worked as a high school English teacher in Lynbrook for 18 years.
“He had a love of words, a love of language,” Karen recalled. “Loved to read loved to write, loved to correct people’s grammar.”
He served the district coaching both basketball and tennis. As head coach, Cingiser led Lynbrook’s boy’s basketball teams won six league titles and two Long Island South Shore Championships. The boy’s tennis team won ten league titles in ten seasons under his coaching. Cingiser was named Long Island Coach of the Year twice and in 2019 he was inducted into the Nassau County High School Athletics Hall of Fame.
He also spent two years as the assistant coach for Hofstra’s men’s basketball team, wining back-to-back East Coast conference Championships and appearing in two NCAA tournaments.
Afterschool and during some summers Cingiser worked as a tennis instructor at racquet and country clubs throughout the island. The summers he wasn’t instructing, Cingiser worked as the head counselor at overnight summer camps his children attended. Marjan would work as camp photographer.
After several years applying for the position, Cingiser became head coach of the Brown Bears in 1981. He moved his family up to Rhode Island and spent ten years as head coach, winning a total of 93 games. Cingiser led the Bears to their lone Ivy League championship in the 1985-86 season, bringing the team to the NCAA tournament.
“My senior year, when we won the title, he put a number on the whiteboard in the locker room that was there the entire season. The number was 3.13,” recalled Michael Waitkus, who played under Cingiser’s coaching in the championship game. “So March 13, the first day of the NCAA tournament in 1986. And every day we walked in, looked at that number and that was the single goal, just to be playing on 3.13, and we got there.”
“He was a great man Mike,” Waitkus added. “Mike was a great human being. He touched so many people, people like me. I wouldn’t be where I am today without somebody like Mike, he was a wonderful, wonderful human being and great coach.”
After leaving Brown, he worked as a co-director of Camp Wah-nee in Torrington, Connecticut. In retirement, Cingiser and Marjan moved to South Carolina and then Florida. Cingiser spent his free time watching sports, caddying, playing golf and enjoying old home movies.
He died unexpectedly, surrounded by family and friends. He is survived by his wife, Marjan, daughters, Karen and Lisa, son David, their spouses and, his greatest accomplishment, his six grandchildren. His daughter Nicole predeceased him.
“The greatest gift he gave to us and to the people that were involved in his life, is a sense of family,” said Karen. “He created family with his high school basketball players at Lynbrook. He created family with the players at Brown. He had a great sense of humor and a great sense of loyalty and was able to build relationships that created family.”
In lieu of a funeral, Brown will honor Cingiser’s memory with a ceremony at 3:00 pm on Feb. 15 ahead of their home game against Penn.
