Columbus East graduate Karen Force goes in for a layup against Columbia during her playing days at Cornell.
Submitted photo
Karen Force Spurgeon has never considered herself a legend, but she is about to be honored as one by the Ivy League.
The Columbus East and Cornell graduate recently was chosen as a “Legend of Ivy League Basketball.” She will be honored at today’s Ivy League women’s basketball tournament championship game.
“It’s incredibly special,” she said. “It’s something that you don’t think about things like this when you’re playing. These kind of things aren’t at the forefront of your mind. It’s your teammates, it’s your team focusing on a common goal. I was just fortunate to have coaches and teammates to help me develop and make me look good. Everybody has their own roles and skill sets, and it takes more than one player to make an impact.”
Force was the first Ivy League women’s basketball player to record at least 1,250 career points and 400 career assists. She became the 10th player in Cornell history to score more than 1,000 points in a career, and her total of 1,257 points ranked fourth on the Big Red’s all-time scoring list. Her 459 career assists were the most ever recorded by any Cornell basketball player and was the fifth most in Ivy League women’s history when she graduated in 2004. The mark still ranks second in Big Red history and 10th in Ivy League history.
An Ivy All-Rookie team selection in 2000-01, Force was an All-Ivy honorable mention honoree as a sophomore, then became the first junior in program history to be named to the All-Ivy first team. She was a second-team pick as a senior.
Force was the first Big Red women’s basketball player and one of only two ever to be named a three-time team captain. Her senior year, she won the Ronald P. Lynch Senior Spirit Award, which is given to student-athletes whose leadership on and off the field contributes positively to Big Red athletics. She was inducted into Cornell’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015.
“I had a great time,” she said. “I look back on it, and I had almost two different types of careers. I had a coaching staff my first two years and a different staff the second two years. I had a different role. We had a completely different offensive philosophy. My last two years were much more aggressive, and it really worked well for me. I’m very lucky to have the experience for both, but as I think that second phase, I was able to have more as an impact.”
At East, Force totaled 990 points, 320 assists and 250 steals in her career. She also was a three-time All-State soccer player and was the program’s all-time leader in goals and assists when she graduated in 2000.
When she moved on to Cornell, her parents Harold and Debbie, brother Clayton and sister Cathy Koccaja continued to travel to watch her play basketball.
“My family has been throughout the years a major rock in my life,” Karen said. “My brother and sister are older, so by the time I got to my college career, they had lives, but the still came to my games. My parents had their own business and didn’t miss a game my senior year. They flew all over the place. As an adult now with my own career, I can’t imagine doing that. I was so lucky throughout my career.”
After graduating from Cornell, Force spent one year there as a graduate assistant coach, then one year as an assistant at Manchester and two at Manhattan. She moved to Louisville in 2008 and has been working for ZimmerBiomet for 13 years, working in orthopedic sales with surgeons who put in joint replacements.
“I was living in New York City at the time, and I got this opportunity in Louisville,” she said. “It was a little closer to home, so started on a different career path.”
In 2019, Force married Dr. Josh Spurgeon, and they live in Prospect, Kentucky. She has a 5-year-old step-daughter Ezra and 7-month old daughter Sadie.
The family flew to Boston on Thursday for this weekend’s Ivy League men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which are taking place at Harvard. The Ivy League began honoring as legends one men’s and one women’s player from each of the league’s eight schools from 2017-19, but did not the past two years because of COVID.
This year’s women’s class will be honored during today’s 5 p.m. women’s championship game.
”I think it will be fun to be back in the gym,” Karen said. “I’ll hopefully catch up with other athletic staff that are still there. I had a great time, very fond memories. You live that life, and then you move on. You build a career and a family. It almost seems like a lifetime ago.”
