In college basketball it’s the players who bask in the spotlight and soak in the cheers. Successful coaches attain rock-star celebrity status. Even the humble ones, a group in which Colorado’s Tad Boyle qualifies, become the face of programs once sustained winning turns into sustained careers.

Yet at every major college program there is a rotation of players, so to speak, who take care of all the background work. Booking flights and hotels. Organizing recruiting visits. Managing ticket requests and so much more.

At Colorado, Marge Marcy is the one who makes it all happen.

A fixture in the basketball offices of the CU Events Center even before Boyle arrived 15 years ago, Marcy’s long-term run as the glue for the entire Colorado men’s basketball program will conclude with her retirement at the end of the month.

Marcy’s departure will leave a void in the program — both spiritually and tangibly in the countless responsibilities she handles — that won’t soon be replaced.

“To me, it seems like it was just yesterday,” Marcy said. “I remember driving up to CU when I first started and said if I could be just lucky to work at this place. And I didn’t have any connection to CU.

“When you work with somebody for that long, there’s ups and downs and there’s struggles. But we always had a feeling that we worked well together. I supported him, he supported me. It’s been amazing.”

Marcy originally applied for an administrative position with the CU women’s program but didn’t get the job. Shortly afterward, Jeff Bzdelik was hired as CU’s men’s coach, and as fate would have it, Marcy and Bzdelik attended the same high school in suburban Chicago.

When Boyle was hired to replace Bzdelik in April of 2010, Marcy had reason to be concerned for her still relatively-new job. Not that she’d done anything wrong, but a new coach wanting to put his own people in place is part of the business in major college athletics.

Yet not only was Marcy already an expert in all the administrative aspects of starting a program, she was gracious in showing Boyle’s family around campus. Boyle and Marcy both said the work chemistry was evident almost immediately, and it soon became apparent to the new CU coach that getting his “own hire” would only serve to displace the better hire already in place.

Marcy has been there ever since. At least until the end of this month.

“She’s been instrumental not just for our office, but our staff, the assistant coaches, all the work she does with travel and expense reports. Just the minutiae of the administration of running a basketball program day-to-day,” Boyle said.

“The things most people don’t even think about, she does it in a seamless manner.

“She’s been very loyal. She’s gone on trips with us. She’s in our corner, win or lose. She’s part of us. She’s part of our staff. I look at her like an assistant coach. In terms of being part of the team, being part of the family, Marge Marcy has been really an integral part of our success since I’ve been here.”

Marcy’s official title is “Assistant to the Head Coach,” but no title could accurately describe all the duties she handles.

When Boyle needs to juggle a schedule that might include a recruiting trip, an administrative trip and a personal trip in the same week, it’s Marcy who does the juggling. From accommodations to travel bookings to meal arrangement, Marcy usually is running the point for the CU program.

As the years passed, Marcy took the lead on a number of projects, often with stellar results. The remodeling of the basketball office a few years ago, adding an eye-catching collage of CU’s greatest hoops alums, was Marcy’s vision. When Boyle took over, there were only a few hundred attendees at CU’s summer youth camps. With Marcy leading much of the effort, that number has expanded to around 1,500.

On top of everything else, Marcy also has been a sort of team mom, routinely providing an off-the-floor sounding board for players and often maintaining close friendships with them after they’ve moved on.

In her 15 seasons on Boyle’s staff, the Buffs have reached six NCAA tournaments and were denied a seventh when the 2020 tournament was canceled at the start of the COVID pandemic. When Boyle broke the program’s wins record on Dec. 21, 2022, he insisted on bringing the other staff members to the postgame press conference podium who had been with him since he was first hired at CU — Marcy, academics coordinator Mindy Sclaro, director of operations Bill Cartun and associate head coach Mike Rohn.

Sclaro changed jobs within the university earlier this year, and now Marcy is departing. Marcy’s contributions to the program have been so expansive and critical, Boyle said the person who ultimately fills the current vacancy on the coaching staff might have to take on some of the duties Marcy handled for nearly two decades.

“Now, when I look back on it, it’s something that was organic,” Marcy said. “We worked together so long and so well, I can’t imagine it not being that way. We’ve been family for so long, it’s hard to image it any other way.”