Bradley women’s basketball head coach Andrea Gorski has decided to call it a career, unexpectedly announcing her retirement on Tuesday afternoon.
“After 25 years, I am officially retiring from coaching,” Gorski said in a release. “It has been the honor of a lifetime leading Bradley Women’s Basketball and representing my alma mater and this great university for the past six years … but my heart is pulling me in a different direction.”
Following the 2021 season, Gorski took a week off from coaching related activities to ponder her future. She says that she is typically ready to get started on the next season after a few days, but something else was pulling at her.
“You don’t really think about it much during the season cause you’re just busy game planning for the next game,” Gorski said. “I started reflecting on what I want in the next few years and just as a coach, especially a Division I coach, you’re not really available for your family and they’ve really put my career first.”
She made her decision to retire on Saturday.
“[My family has] put up with me missing a lot so just having an opportunity to move down to Florida and find something part-time, be more available and soak up time with family has really been tugging at me,” Gorski said.
Gorski especially wants to spend more time with her 1-year-old granddaughter, who she’s seen only a handful of times due to the pandemic and the rigorous schedule of coaching.
“I just felt like if I didn’t take this opportunity, I’d probably regret it,” she said.
Gorski, who played at Bradley from 1988-1992 and helped the Braves finish in the upper half of the conference standings for three consecutive years, also coached the team to the top half of the MVC in 2018, 2019 and 2021. Her squad in 2021, which featured program-leading scorer Gabi Haack and Lasha Petree, reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history and fulfilled a promise made by Gorski at the beginning of her Bradley coaching career.
“Coach Gorski proved Bradley Women’s Basketball can win championships and we will continue to strive for the highest levels of achievement, on and off the court,” Bradley Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Chris Reynolds said in the release.
Gorski helped the Braves complete a 180-degree turn under her leadership. From the 2012-13 season to the 2014-15 season, Bradley did not reach the double-digit mark in wins. After Gorski took the helm, the Braves posted win totals of 9, 12, 13, 20, and 22 from the 2015-16 season to the 2020-21 season, respectively.
The move came even more unexpectedly, as Gorski’s contract still had three years remaining on it.
“It does make it hard because you want to see things through,” Gorski said. “I’ve never coached for money because if you coach for money, I think you’re in it for the wrong reasons so that’s never been a factor. But [the time left on the contract] made it a little bit harder; a lot of coaches would not do that.”
The Braves went 4-24 in Gorski’s final year but were plagued with a young roster, a strong non-conference slate and Haack’s season-ending ACL injury on Jan. 1 against Illinois State.
“It’s hard to leave a place you love and it’s hard to leave a team you love,” Gorski said. “I met with the team yesterday and that was incredibly hard as well because they mean so much to me and we had a lod of adversity this year but they were troopers and made coaching fun still.”
Eight Braves earned All-MVC awards under Gorski’s tutelage, matching the number of players who earned all-league since Gorski took home All-Gateway Conference honors in 1991-92, before Bradley joined the MVC in women’s basketball. Gorski, who ranks 22nd on Bradley’s all-time scoring list herself, helped produce five players who surpassed her 980 career points, including Haack, Petree and Chelsea Brackmann.
“I just feel lucky to have met so many great people and so many great players and worked with so many great awesome coaches and really that’s why I loved coaching, was for the relationships,” Gorski said.
Gorski was inducted into the Bradley Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996 after she began her coaching career as a graduate assistant with the Braves during the 1992-93 season. From 1996 to 2008, Gorski took over the girl’s program at Ladywood High School in Michigan and the Associated Press tabbed her as the state coach of the year in 2005.
From 2008-2013, Gorski breathed new life into Concordia University-Ann Arbor’s program, leading the Cardinals to the NAIA Tournament thrice after the team had never reached the tournament before.
“I think you surround yourself with the right people,” Gorski said of how she reversed multiple programs’ fortunes. “You recruit the right student athletes, you hire the right staff members, you work for great bosses and a lot of that is luck, I’m not going to lie.”
One of Bradley’s most successful women’s basketball head coaches, Gorski continued her trend of turning programs around as the associate head coach at Southern Illinois University from 2013-2015. The Salukis reached the WNIT in Gorski’s final season in Carbondale, their first postseason appearance in eight years.
“You’re not successful on your own and when you build a program, there’s no shortcuts,” Gorski said. “I’ve always thought that if you work hard, you do the next right thing and you treat people the right way, then good things will happen.”
Sentiments are admittedly running high through Gorski’s head right now and she said retirement likely won’t fully hit her until the time that next basketball season rolls around. However, that doesn’t mean Gorski will stay away from the game, citing that she may see announcing in her future.
“I love basketball, I love the X’s and O’s of it,” Gorski said. “I love the analysis and I’m going to follow the game. It’s just one of the things I would maybe get into, but for right now, I’m just kind of taking a step back and I really didn’t have any time off in a long time.”
Since she has taken a step back, Gorski said her phone has been flooded with messages from players, other coaches, fans and staff. All of those people and the relationships she had with them, she said, are the reasons why she loved coaching.
“I’m going to miss the student-athletes, that’s number one there,” Gorski said. “Every staff member I’ve had has become a friend of mine.”
“I love this place and everything it represents,” Gorski said of her alma mater. “I especially love and cherish the players and staff that I have been so very fortunate to coach and work with. This game has given me far more blessings than I deserve.”
This story has been updated since it’s original publication
