Dorothy Gaters said she cannot remember anything about the first game she coached for Marshall Metropolitan High School’s girls basketball team in 1975.
But she does remember how she felt coaching her first season.
“I was terrified,” she said.
She eventually got over that fear and went on to become the winningest high school basketball coach in Illinois. But after 45 years, 1,153 victories, 10 state titles and numerous city and conference crowns, Gaters decided before this season to retire from coaching. She wants to spend time with her great-grandchildren, Tristian and Darius.
“I’ve helped other people with their kids over the years; now I have to help with my own,” said the 75-year-old Gaters.
In a year the Chicago Sky won the WNBA championship and got more fans in the city excited about women’s basketball, people also are celebrating the accomplishments of Gaters, who was on the ground floor of girls basketball.
Some argue there is a long way to go for women’s sports acceptance. But people such as Gaters have been a part in advancing women’s sports and Gaters has helped many players from the West Side of the city go to college for hoops and academics. Some former Marshall Commandos have played in the pros all over the world — including Cappie Pondexter, a one-time member of the Sky.
Marshall head coach Dorothy Gaters has a laugh with a referee during a game against Whitney Young on Jan. 14, 2016. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
“She absolutely is a pioneer,” said Craig Anderson, the executive director of the Illinois High School Association, which hosted its first girls basketball state tournament in 1976. “It was challenging for girls sports to just get off the ground and it’s incredibly fun to be able to celebrate where we are today.”
While Gaters said she didn’t have such headaches as a lack of gym time or inadequate facilities that many girls programs faced, she remembers dealing with the deeper issue of racism during some games in the early days. She told her players to treat it as a life lesson.
“It was hard to go into a gym where the other team had 1,000 fans and you had 100,” she said. “And there were some things said but the players were able to tune it out. We didn’t like it. But we were there to represent Marshall High School. Our attitude was ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but we’re going to win this game.’”
Dorothy Gaters is stepping down as Marshall High School's girls basketball coach after 45 years as the winningest high school basketball coach in Illinois history. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
Gaters was not able to play sports growing up in Chicago and attending Marshall because there were no sports for girls. She went to DePaul and earned a degree in physical education and shortly before graduation, she formed an Amateur Athletic Union team called the Debs, named after a teammate. They played around the city for a few years. That was her sports career.
Then she got into the world of coaching, where she had that terrifying first year.
Janet Harris, right, was an elite recruit in 1980. Marshall coach Dorothy Gaters says she brought attention to the program. "I was like ... now we're getting somewhere." (Chicago Tribune)
But the wins started coming as did her confidence. Tiffany Sardin remembers her impressions of Gaters when Sardin transferred from Thornton High School to Marshall in 1999.
“Oh, my goodness, she seemed pretty darn confident to me,” said Sardin, who is the women’s basketball coach at Chicago State University. “It could be intimidating just being in her presence.”
Peers find her peerless
In 2019, veteran Andrew High School coach Bobby Matz found out his team was playing a tournament game against Gaters for the first time.
“It’s a little humbling to be thinking about that — sitting on the opposite side of her,” he said. “There is not a single coach I can think of in the girls game that has advanced it as much as she has. Her influence is far-reaching.”
Matz has been coaching for 25 years, 19 as a girls basketball coach and said he was just a year old when Gaters started coaching the Commandos.
“Dorothy was one of the ground-floor people that made girls basketball something people knew about,” Matz said. “If you didn’t know much about girls basketball, you knew Marshall and you knew Dorothy Gaters. You knew she produced good players.
“She’s done a lot for a lot of young ladies in the CPS that may have not known what direction they had in their lives or what their focus may have been. She’s had significant impact on a great deal of kids.”
Fenwick High School’s Dave Power is the new active wins leader in Illinois with 997. According to the National Federation of State Highs School Associations list, through 2019, only 11 girls basketball coaches in the nation had 1,000 or more victories and Gaters was eighth on the list.
“I was hoping that Dorothy and I would get together and play a game where two coaches with 1,000 or more wins would go head-to-head against each other,” Power said. “I don’t know if that has ever happened before. That would have been cool. I’m taken aback that she’s retiring. I’m happy for her, but sad, too.”
DePaul University women’s basketball coach Doug Bruno raved about Gaters.
“Dorothy is Chicago girls basketball,” Bruno said. “Once you were blessed to coach a Dorothy Gaters-coached player, that’s one of the most pleasurable moments you can have in coaching. Every player I had that she coached was smart, coachable and unbelievably tough. She coached them. She didn’t coddle them.”
Marshall coach Dorothy Gaters lifts the trophy she received from her coaching staff following her 1000th career victory with her team's win over Thornwood High School on Nov. 18, 2014. (Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)
Sardin went on to play at Virginia, where she was a three-year captain. Since 2006, she has climbed the coaching ladder, starting at a high school in Virginia and working her way up to her first Division 1 head coaching position in 2020 at Chicago State University.
She said that Marshall practices were intense and there were usually two practices a day — one at 6 a.m. before school and one right after school.
“I don’t know if I would be a coach right now if it wasn’t for her,” Sardin said. “I said that I wanted to do what coach Gaters is doing. She made an impact on my life and my teammates’ lives as well.”
Frustrating beginning
In Gaters’ first year, she guided the Commandos to a 16-4 season and followed it up with seasons of 21-3, 29-1 and 29-1, giving her a 95-9 record.
That was a huge start that just about any coach would drool over, but Gaters was frustrated. In both the 1978 and 1979 seasons, she brought twin 29-0 records to the state tournament and suffered first-round losses.
In 1980, the team finished second in the state in Class AA and in 1981, it finished third. Gaters’ record was a stunning 156-14 and yet, she was not happy with her performance.
Four years down state. No titles.
“What hurt was that (Marshall player) Janet Harris was the No. 1 recruit in the nation and we didn’t win it,” Gaters said. “I knew that it had a lot to do with me.”
Champs at last
Gaters said she picked up a few tidbits of wisdom from seasoned coaches and it paid off in 1982.
Marshall players celebrate after defeating East St. Louis-Lincoln for the Class AA basketball title on March 27, 1982, in Champaign. The title was coach Dorothy Gaters' first of eight at Marshall, and the 1981-82 squad was her only team that finished undefeated. (Dave Nystrom / Chicago Tribune)
Not only did the Commandos break through and win the Class AA state title, they had the only undefeated season in program history with a 32-0 record.
Some of the coaches she gleaned knowledge from included John B. McLendon, the first African American to coach in any professional sport, Marshall boys basketball coaches Luther Bedford and Al Williams, plus Chris Head, a veteran coach of multiple Public League teams.
“They taught me basically everything regarding fundamentals, conditioning and strategy,” she said.
Gaters would guide six more teams to Class AA titles. After the state went to four classes, her teams won a AAA title and a pair of AA crowns in 2018 and 2019.
The final game
In 2020, the Commandos were seeking a third straight Class AA title and suffered a 43-37 loss to Pleasant Plains in the title game on Feb. 29 at Doug Collins Court in Normal.
This came shortly before COVID-19 shut down much of the world and it turned out to be Gaters’ last game.
The 2020-21 season was abbreviated with no postseason and Gaters opted not to play. That was also the time she said she was mulling retirement.
There was no formal announcement. It became public when she was interviewed by a television reporter who quizzed her on the Sky’s championship and while making small talk about the coming high school season, she said she was retiring.
Gaters remains the school’s athletic director and hired longtime assistant Fred Eaton to replace her.
When asked to sum up her career in a few words, she chose two: “Great ride.”
Tribune reporter Talia Soglin contributed.
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