Lady Griz Orientation :: Shay Shippen

Shay Shippen's story is the draw of family, the power of place, has been since she was just a tyke, learning for the first time about the path she'd one day take, through elementary school, middle school high school, then out on her own for college, away from family, away from home for the first time.

It didn't go over well. "I still remember it. She said, Mom, is there home-school college?" says Kaly, mother of Raleigh, Kysa and Shay, all of whom took hold of the family passion growing up in southern Idaho, the sport of basketball, and turned it into an opportunity to play collegiately.

That pull of home, of proximity to her people, never left her, even as she packed up last summer not for the closest option to Idaho Falls, where she starred for four years at Skyline High, but for Manhattan, for Columbia University, drawn to New York City as only that metropolis can.

They went on a trip when she was in high school, to a basketball camp at the Naval Academy in Maryland, then up to Broadway, to watch a cousin perform in the Disney version of Hamilton. The energy of the city, that unique lure, was getting its hooks in her, pulling her east, testing those bonds.

She was at Columbia as a junior, in February 2024, on a recruiting trip, watching the first school to reach out to her, watching the Lions knock off No. 25 Princeton on Senior Day, Levien Gymnasium sold out days in advance for a match-up of the Ivy League's heavyweights, a capacity crowd of 2,698.

The girl who asked about home-school college decided that, then, was what she'd do. She'd make the 2,200-mile move to the school that sits a few blocks from the Hudson River, a few blocks from the northern edge of Central Park, in the heart of everything.

But it's her heart we're going to follow, the one of the sixth grader, who was asked by her history teacher to write out three goals she wanted to accomplish in her life. Easy. She wanted to start on varsity as a freshman. She wanted to get straight A's. And she wanted to play Division I basketball.

She knocked off the first two at Skyline, where she would become the leading scorer in state history and be named the Idaho Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior. She accomplished the third when she stepped on the floor in November in Columbia's 74-69 road win at Butler in the Lions' season opener.

She would have to shut things down in December for surgery on a broken sesamoid bone in her foot, an injury that had been hampering her for some time, back to her high school days.

She would have to watch from the bench as Columbia fell at home to Harvard on Senior Day to miss out on another Ivy League title, then fall to the Crimson again six days later in the league tournament before the Lions went scorched earth and won five games by 117 points to claim the WBIT championship.

Yes, the academics were elite. Yes, the basketball team was winning, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and Shay Shippen wanted to be closer to family, back in the mountains. Remember, her third goal as a sixth grader was to play Division I basketball. Where she did it became the priority.

"When I was reflecting towards the end of the season, I decided I wanted more for myself," she says. "I wanted to be closer to family. I want to be happy with what I'm doing. If I'm not happy, I need to change my environment."

She entered the transfer portal after the season, chose the program that had been after her for years and has been in Missoula since June, practicing alongside Kennedy Gillette, a second cousin who feels like immediate family, and alongside former club teammate Avery Waddington, more family.

"Being close to home, being with Avery and Kennedy, it felt like everything was coming together in the best way possible," she said. "That's super special for me.

"All these girls are super competitive and so talented. They bring so much energy. I'm surrounded by a bunch of winners and people who are super competitive, which is really important. I've had so much fun."

She's one of five transfers, one of nine newcomers on Nate Harris's second team. The coach has been working youth camps this week inside Dahlberg Arena, the last of Montana's Big Sky championship banners, as always, overhead, the one dating from the 2014-15 season.

It's there as a reminder of what was, the empty space after it serving as a clarion call, growing louder, more urgent by the passing year, to the 2026-27 Lady Griz: Let's make this right.

"We want to come in and win," said Shippen of the team's new players. "I know Nate wants to win and will do anything to win.

"I want to be part of something that's super great. It's been years since this team has won a championship. It's going to mean something to this community when it happens. I want to be part of hanging that banner. We get to start a new era and a new legacy."

Harris gets philosophical when talking about Shippen, and it's probably the only way a person can wrap their head around what she did in high school, and that's not even focusing on what she did solely on the basketball court, where she scored 2,372 career points.

"I think it was Aristotle who said, you are what you repeatedly do," he says. And all Shippen has done almost her entire life is succeed, no matter the sport taken up, no matter the level of competition. She comes, she sees, she conquers.

She went to state four times, not in her high school career but as a freshman, in the fall for volleyball, in the winter for basketball, in the spring for tennis, then just for fun she bounced over to the track and qualified in the jumps. And away she went, just doing what came naturally.

"I loved growing up in a family that is good in all sports," says Shippen, who would watch as Raleigh took his basketball talents to Hartnell College in California, Kysa to the College of Southern Idaho, where she was a one-year teammate with Gillette, before finishing her playing career at Snow College in Utah.

"We believed the kids should be able to do lots of things and do what they love," says Kaly. "Shay loved doing everything and competing."

Wait, even beyond volleyball, basketball, tennis, golf and track and field? There's more? "She won freestyle with the Magic City Swim Team, played tackle football a couple of years, did dance. She was never afraid to try new things." Obviously. What, no soccer?

Her dad, Ty, played basketball at Ricks College, at BYU and at Alaska-Anchorage. He's been a long-time high school boys basketball coach in Idaho. Kaly played at Ricks College, BYU and San Diego State. Oh, and Kaly's mom was once the high-jump record holder at Boise State.

"It's nice to have parents who get it and siblings who get it," says Shippen. "They understand the process. They understand that it's tough and not easy. Everybody in my family is very competitive.

"Our parents never pressured us to do anything but I was always around basketball since my dad coached as I was growing up. We all loved it and wanted to do it no matter what. We had a hoop in our driveway and were always playing. I thought, if they're doing that, I want to be doing that too."

That's why a girl says to her mom one day, why would I ever want to leave this? Why would I ever want to go far away?

To see her now, as a Lady Griz, is to see the culmination of all those experiences, all those stories, including one that will answer a question you might have the first time you watch Shippen play basketball. Is she left-handed? Is she right-handed? This is so confusing.

"She was maybe in first grade, working on left-handed lay-ups. I was like, holy smokes, your form is really nice," says Kaly. "I told her to step back a little bit and shoot a set shot with her left hand. Her form was just better. It was correct. With her right, she'd kind of shoot it two-handed."

And right was her dominant hand. Or so everybody thought.

"I went into the house and said, Ty, come out here. We both watched her and looked at each other. Okay, keep shooting with your right hand when you're close to the basket, but when you scoot back, shoot with your left. She's a righty who shoots left-handed."

So, she went to state four years as a right-handed tennis player, will throw full-court passes on the basketball court with her right, but she shoots from distance, eats, bowls and plays pool – Wait, she does those too? Is this a Bo Jackson commercial? – with her left hand. Got it?

Imagine being in the opposing locker room before a game and getting that scouting report. Okay, take away the left-handed 3-point shot but know that she finishes in the paint with her right. And know that she can dribble just as well with either. And that's how you score nearly 2,400 points in high school.

It's like she possesses the most mundane super power of all super powers. Flying, being invisible, teleporting? All cool. But how fun would it be to have Shay Shippen's skill set for a day, to unleash on an unsuspecting defender at open gym?

"She knows how to get buckets," says Harris. "She can score from all over the floor." "It's been quite a weapon for her as a player," Kaly adds.

She had another naturally occurring benefit, courtesy of a male cousin her age and her dad's standing as a coach. Boys from across the Magic Valley learned who Shay Shippen was up close and personal as she split her time between girls' and boys' leagues as a pre-middle-schooler.

She didn't just earn a participant ribbon in the boys' league. She was one of its best players. It's why she's the player she is, someone who can do everything from playing the point to scoring and defending in the post. "Now put me anywhere on the court and I'll do it," she said.

If your mental image now is of some ruthless competitor, we need to get out a new brush and paint a softer picture. We don't need to go all pink and rainbows but we do need to expand who Shippen is and how she's wired. Call her a competitor with a huge reservoir of compassion.

Her mom likes to tell the story of the girl who tried out for a basketball team, one Shippen obviously made, but the other girl didn't. It was Shippen who expanded the size of the tent to include more people. If the team wasn't able to roster her, she would still be welcomed in, part of the group.

Kaly didn't know any of it until she saw that girl filming one of Shippen's games and asked her what she was doing. Well, she was going to make a highlight tape for Shay. She told Kaly, "When I tried out and didn't make it, Shay made sure I felt included and always looked out for me. I just love Shay."

A Level 10 parenting experience, for sure.

Harris tells of the time he drove from Missoula to Idaho Falls, where Shippen lived her first six years before her dad took a job at Minico High, where her mom played and scored nearly 1,500 points. The family returned to Idaho Falls a number of years later.

Harris, at least this time, didn't show up for a Skyline basketball game but a volleyball match. There is nothing quite like the sport of volleyball to give a recruiter a sense of team, of teammate, with its huddles after every single point.

How does the player react when things are going well? What does she do when the team is struggling? Those things can't be hidden on the volleyball court.

"You really get to see how much people want to engage with other people," said Harris. "It's so unique in volleyball. She was a very good volleyball player and a tremendous teammate. She did such a good job of including others."

That was when she was still being recruited the first time around, when she was doing the opposite of what the experts of today would tell a player who shows college potential. Ditch everything else. Specialize, specialize, specialize, basketball, basketball, basketball, all day, every day.

Shippen did it her own way. She played three seasons of volleyball, the other fall, of her sophomore year, opting to golf. There were four winters competing in basketball, four springs playing tennis. She went to state in tennis as an individual three times, her senior year in mixed doubles.

She actually went to state in tennis more than she did in basketball (three times) and volleyball (two times). "It's so different, such an individual sport," she says. "It's one of the most mentally challenging sports you can play and helped me so much with basketball.

"In basketball, you have teammates you can turn to, coaches you can turn to. In singles, you're out there all by yourself. If you're struggling, you have to fight that mental battle. How am I going to get out of this? How am I going to win this point? It was a good way to not make basketball my entire life."

Kaly has another story, of Shay's senior year, when she and Grant Parker teamed up to play mixed doubles, Shay a seasonal player with an indomitable will to win, no matter the sport, no matter her experience.

Before the Idaho 5A state tournament, Shippen and Parker went to the Capital City Tennis Classic in Boise, which draws the best prep players and doubles teams from across the Pacific Northwest, these two tennis Davids going up against the sport's Goliaths. They finished second.

A few weeks later they won the consolation title at the 5A state tournament. "She knows how to compete and find a way," says Kaly.

But this is still a basketball story and we need to get Shippen from ambidextrous youngster to battling-the-boys youth to the player that had college programs asking Who is that and can we get her to commit? before she had even reached her goal of becoming a varsity starter as a freshman.

She played bonus basketball on local teams, from time to time making the journey to Salt Lake City to take on the giants of her expanding world: players from big cities. In sixth grade she decided she needed to join them and, after a nerve-racking tryout, made the team at Natalie Williams Basketball Academy.

She would eventually begin traveling to Seattle to play for FBC Northwest Alliance, where she became teammates with Avery Waddington.

Shippen began her high school career not with an eye on breaking the state scoring record but with the goal of surpassing her mom's nearly 1,500 career points that Kaly scored at Minico High. She set 2,000 as a secondary goal.

She reached 1,000 points before the end of her sophomore season, which put Destiny Slocum's then state record of 2,281 points on red alert and her mom's on, well, whatever is higher than red alert.

Shippen averaged 23.6 points, 10.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 3.2 steals as a senior to surpass any point total any Idaho high school player had ever scored on the girls' side. When she was named the 2025 Idaho Gatorade Player of the Year, Eagle High coach Jeremy Munroe said:

"Shay is the most complete player in the state. She shoots really well, she has an incredibly high IQ, she handles the ball well, she's strong, rebounds at a high level and she usually plays the best defense on the floor. Playing against her is a nightmare."

It's what Columbia's coaches saw the first time they saw Shippen play, before she had even scored the first of her 2,372 points at Skyline High. "I went to an elite camp and got my first offer. I remember crying. What is happening? I was in shock. Oh my gosh, this could be a reality for me," she recalls.

Then, as her career progressed, the onslaught. "I started getting a lot of calls. I liked it early on. My last summer got really hard. So many calls, so many texts. It kind of got overwhelming."

She was able to sneak away for that recruiting trip to Columbia in February of her junior year, but her busy schedule, with basketball rolling into tennis, kept that as the only visit she was able to take for more than six months.

"Columbia was amazing but was it amazing because it was the only thing I'd experienced? I needed something else to compare it to," says Shippen, who took new Pepperdine coach Katie Faulkner up on her offer to visit the Malibu school, giving Shippen opposite ends of the spectrum to choose from.

New York City or the Southern California coast? An established coaching staff that had been winning or a first-year Division I coach with a dream? Either would be a shock to a young Shippen. That's so far away!

She had visits set up for UNLV, Boise State and Montana, but she had seen enough. She was ready for this whole process to be over. "The visit to Pepperdine was awesome, but there was so much new, so much unknown. Columbia was very secure," Shippen said.

"It was out of my comfort zone to go across the country. I really like small towns, and that was the biggest city, the farthest choice I could have made. Definitely a growing experience for me but it felt right."

It must be a heck of a thing to go to sleep -- or go sleepless -- on the campus of Columbia University the night before you take your very first college course, which happened to be calculus for Shippen, at a school that was founded in 1754 and has an acceptance rate of a mere four percent.

The best and the brightest, indeed. There is a reason Butler Library holds a foundational spot on campus and is one its largest buildings. Columbia is 18 square blocks that contains miles of educational ambition, 36,000 students strong, three-quarters of those graduate or postgraduate students.

"You're surrounded by the most intelligent students who are really motivated," says Shippen. "I had friends who studied eight hours a day and were always in the library. It was like there was a standard."

The challenge for any athlete on campus was that time spent in sport meant time not able to be spent on academics. Imagine Shippen's 20-day schedule at the end of the season. A trip to Ithaca, N.Y., for the Ivy League tournament, then a home game against St. John's to open the WBIT.

A road trip to Fargo to face North Dakota State, a trip home, a cross-country flight to Berkeley to face Cal, then a direct trip to Wichita, Kansas, to face and defeat Wisconsin and BYU in the final games of the WBIT. The team arrived home on April 2. March Madness had bled over.

If the academic side is a battle at Columbia, and it is, just like it is at the seven other Ivies, to see who can rise to the top, who will be graded the best of the best, Shippen wasn't in a fair fight.

"You can't play the compare game," she says. "If you do, you're just going to feel worse about yourself. Being a college basketball player is really difficult. You don't always have the time or energy to put into a class what everybody else can.

"They maybe had time to read every page of a book that you haven't, so you have to have patience with yourself."

She didn't enter the portal thinking Montana, Montana, Montana, but the process is made easier than the first time around. Now player knows coach and coach knows player. There is less selling, more straight talk.

"I enjoyed the portal process a lot more (than the initial recruiting process)," said Shippen. "It was a lot more straightforward. Either you're interested or you're not. You know what's real and what's not and who really wants you.

"I wanted a coach who was going to believe in me, and I knew Nate and knew he was a great, honest guy. I could trust what he was saying to me. I wanted to win and go somewhere everyone was going to compete every day in practice. I felt like I could make an impact and a difference."

Harris adds, "I think she was looking for a place that maybe resonated a little more with who she is as a person. She accomplished a lot of things at Skyline. She is still the same versatile player and great teammate I saw years ago.

"She can score all over the floor, she is going to make enough shots that you have to guard her, and she is going to get to the free throw line. She offensive rebounds like crazy and finishes really well."

She was going to major in financial economics at Columbia, will major in economics at Montana while minoring in business. She'll likely also leave with an MBA in her back pocket.

She knows that most students who get accepted to an Ivy League school would do nothing to get in the way of earning an Ivy League degree, that piece of paper the be-all and end-all. Except Shay Shippen is simply more pragmatic than that and opts to choose joy over everything else.

Joy of family, joy of place. "Getting an Ivy League degree wasn't my goal in life. It was to play college basketball. That was No. 1," she says. "I think any college education in general is amazing."

It was nearly a decade ago that she wrote out those three goals as a sixth grader, asked to dream by her history professor. Start on varsity as a freshman. Get all A's in high school. Play college basketball. Check, check, check.

That sixth grader would be pretty impressed by how she's turned out. "I wrote some pretty big goals at a young age, not knowing if I'd be able to accomplish it," she says. "You did start as a freshman, you did get straight A's, you are playing college basketball.

"That's super cool. Young me would be really proud. When things get hard, I try to remember this is what I dreamed of."

University of Montana Athletics

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Kennedy Gillette

Shay Shippen

Avery Waddington

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