At Bishop Gorman, Gaels’ dominance anything but routine

It’s easy to take Bishop Gorman’s athletic success for granted. The Gaels have been so dominant for so long that their accomplishments become almost routine. But doing that would be a mistake.

Grant Rice, Bishop Gorman’s athletic director and basketball coach, and Bridget Michlik, the school’s director of advancement and communications, were sitting in an office recently discussing the Las Vegas private school’s success in the marquee sports of football and basketball.

In making a point about the school’s athletic excellence across the board, Michlik said the girls tennis program had more state titles than the football or basketball teams when Rice politely begged to differ.

“Not anymore,” he said.

The Gorman girls tennis team has won 19 state titles. The boys basketball team has won 22.

That is how it is at Bishop Gorman. The Gaels win so many championships that even the higher-ups who work there sometimes lose count.

But with a new school year having begun and the first full football season since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic about to kick off, there’s one thing with which everybody at Gorman, in Las Vegas and now, even beyond, can agree:

When it comes to high school sports, Bishop Gorman is hard to beat.

Building on tradition

Despite suffering a stunning overtime loss to public school Liberty in the 2019 semifinals that halted a run of 10 consecutive state football championships, Gorman’s success over the last decade in football and boys basketball (nine titles) has helped the Gaels climb to third in the number of Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association championships.

Since opening in 1954, Gorman has won 107 state titles, trailing only Reno and small-school Clark County School District colleague Boulder City, which have accounted for 133 and 119, respectively. Reno High was established in 1879 and Boulder City in 1942, so they have had a significant head start.

Gorman’s private school status and ability to attract and provide financial aid to student-athletes give it a significant advantage over its public-school rivals. While the same can be said of private schools in most metropolitan areas, many of those schools in the bigger population centers play in leagues among themselves.

With Gorman standing alone in Southern Nevada among private schools of its size and classification, it continues to accumulate much of its success at the expense of public schools. The cause and effect has produced jealously, animosity and contempt.

There are major colleges that would be envious of Bishop Gorman’s athletic facilities, particularly the state-of-the-art, 42,000-square-foot Fertitta Athletic Training Center at the south end of the immaculate 5,000-seat football stadium. Features of the training center include an 11,000-square-foot weight room, a 80-seat tiered lecture hall, luxurious locker rooms, hydrotherapy and ice baths and well-appointed coaches’ offices.

Mitch Stephens, senior writer for MaxPreps, a CBS Sports-owned website that has raised the profile of prep sports, calls Gorman’s training center “the Shangri-La” of prep athletic training centers.

The facility was completed in 2012 at a cost of $9.2 million, but that number comes from the architect’s website, not school officials. As a private school, Gorman mostly talks about what it spends on athletics (and other matters) in general or comparative terms.

“We operate within our budget,” Michlik said. “It comes from donations from individuals. It comes from tuition (fees). This campus was built by our community, by our alums, by a core foundation of people who believe in a Catholic education and believe in Bishop Gorman High School.”

According to Gorman’s website, tuition rates for the 2021-22 school year are $14,300 for regular students and $12,900 for Catholic parishioners. Enrollment is capped at 1,500. Financial aid is available, but Gorman insists it does not offer athletic scholarships.

No free rides

“At the end of the day, no one is going to school for free — there’s some tuition assistance but everyone is having to open up the wallet and make a sacrifice,” said former football coach Tony Sanchez, whose vision many credit for Gorman stepping up to compete on a national stage.

The change in philosophy that has resulted in Gorman upgrading its football and basketball schedules to include national private-school opponents also has seen the school win its fair share — if not a majority — of those games as mythical football national championships in 2014, ‘15 and ’16 would suggest.

Polls that determine national high school champions are subjective at best. But as high school sports continue to grow and evolve, it has become increasingly difficult to find one that doesn’t include or mention Bishop Gorman.

“National high school sports are such a hard deal to evaluate,” MaxPreps’ Stephens said. “But their (football) schedule is as tough as any team in the country. They’re afraid of no one and they play toe to toe.”

Same for the Gorman basketball team, which played Virginia’s Oak Hill Academy — one of the high school basketball programs by which all others are measured — during the 2019-20 season, the last before COVID. Gorman lost 84-70 but was competitive for three quarters.

The season before, the Gaels twice played La Lumiere of Indiana, one of the academies that will play in a new super prep league starting in 2021-22, losing by 13 and 5.

Other national prep sports observers have been just as impressed as Stephens by what Gorman has accomplished on the field and court and off.

Wrote Cleveland.com’s Ari Wasserman after touring the Bishop Gorman campus and facilities during the recruitment of former Gaels quarterback Tate Martell in 2017:

“Gorman is the high school version of Ohio State.”

MaxPreps, max effort

You need look no further than the MaxPreps polls and leader lists for verification:

— On its list of all-time greatest football teams, the 2016 Gorman squad that went 15-0 under coach Kenny Sanchez and edged St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in a top-10 national showdown ranked No. 5 behind only the 2001 De La Salle (Concorde, California), 1985 Yates (Houston), 2017 Mater Dei (Santa Ana, California) and 1940 Washington (Massillon, Ohio) teams that went a combined 53-0.

— Among football schools with the most top-25 finishes since 2010, Gorman has eight, ranking second to De La Salle’s nine. Gorman also ranked second behind De La Salle in top-25 finishes in state and national computer rankings, state championships and championship game appearances.

— In boys basketball, Gorman has finished in the top 25 seven times since 2009, with highs of seventh in 2010 and 2012. Its 2010 state championship team that went 30-2, with losses only to crosstown rival Findlay Prep and fellow juggernaut Mater Dei, was ranked the best team in Nevada history. Gorman also was ranked the nation’s second-most dominant basketball team of the past decade behind Mater Dei.

No one would fault athletic director Rice for pounding his chest at the mention of this success. Instead, he acknowledges it with a modest nod and is quick to credit others at the school and — just as important if not moreso — those who came before and have stayed loyal to Gorman by providing the financial support it takes to compete on a national level.

“We’ve had good sports teams, but the success of football is what put Gorman on the map,” Rice said. “We can be traveling in any sport, and if you have a Bishop Gorman shirt on in the airport, people ask to take pictures and stuff. Obviously, we’re proud of that.”

But the championships and notoriety have been a by-product of the school’s philosophy and not a stated goal, Rice said.

“It’s been a group effort in the 20 years I’ve been here. We’ve had good coaches and teams before. But the goal has not been to win state championships. It’s more ‘What are you going to do for our kids? Are you going to get them a college scholarship?’”

Over the past four school years, 151 Gaels have received athletic scholarships, with 74 signing with Division I schools.

Says Rice: “It doesn’t mean they’re all going to Notre Dame or UCLA. It could be Division II or NAIA where you can have a great college career and get a degree. When you have that many kids go to college (on athletic scholarships), kids want to come here.”

Staying humble

As for the jealously, animosity and contempt for Gorman among its peers, Rice says “we’ve been very sensitive to that,” although he and others interviewed believe the relationship between Gorman and its local rivals has improved.

“We’ve done everything we can to do things the right way and fitting in,” he said. “I’m as competitive as anybody. I want to win. But I want to do things the right way more.

“I value the school and its tradition more than winning state championships.”

Regardless on how you perceive Bishop Gorman’s success, what it has accomplished and the stature it has attained will be part of a fascinating and most likely continuing legacy.

Michael Green, a UNLV associate professor of history and Nevada historian, has even begun to mention the Gorman athletic dynasty in the same breath as the legendary and undefeated and unscored upon 1944 Las Vegas High football team.

“To my knowledge, there was never a Nevada high school team like that, and Gorman may be in that pantheon. If you had to pick a couple of high school athletic programs, particularly football, that just dominate … well, that would be it,” Green said before paying Gorman perhaps the ultimate compliment.

“I wonder what Texas thinks about all of this?”

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.