Novi AD Brian Gordon retiring after over 30 years in athletics
There aren’t many roles Brian Gordon hasn’t attempted over his career working in high school athletics.
Over three decades of work as a coach, a teacher and an administrator, Gordon will make an attempt at a new role following the end of the school year – retiree.
After serving the past 11 years as director of athletics and physical education at Novi High School, Gordon is retiring once the 202021 school year wraps up.
“I am really proud of what we have built as a culture in our school and community,” Gordon said of his time at Novi. “With the help of many in Novi schools and the Novi community, we have built a culture which is very inclusive, and very family-oriented. We’re a family here. We support each other. We laugh, we love, and we cry together. I love the fact that so many people rally around our athletic teams, and our kids, to watch them do what they do so well.”
Gordon was actually considering retiring at the end of the 2019-20 school year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. With so many unknown variables impacting high school athletics, Gordon knew he couldn’t walk away until things got back on track.
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, COVID probably pushed you out.’ That’s not true. COVID kept me in,” Gordon said. “I could have retired last year, and I could have retired in the middle of the year – there was an opportunity that was in front of me – but it didn’t feel right in my stomach. This is a family decision. This is something that I discussed with a lot of people about. I wanted to make sure I was going out the right way.”
The right way
Doing things the “right way” has been a philosophy that Gordon has prided himself on and something he learned from his mentor, Royal Oak’s Chuck Jones.
“I had the greatest mentor
that anybody could have had, and that was Chuck,” Gordon said. “Chuck was at Royal Oak as a teacher, coach and athletic administrator for 42 years. Chuck really showed me the right way to do things. Whenever I’m faced with a tough decision, I always will reflect back on how Chuck might have handled it.”
Citing former Royal Oak Dondero Athletic Director Jerry Barich, and former Royal Oak Kimball Principal Tom Neville as other key influences, Gordon developed his philosophy on being an administrator from their leadership.
“To me, it’s being a servant leader. Your responsibility is to give coaches and others the tools to allow them to be successful. Any athletic director that kind of knows what they’re doing, will always have their coaches backs,” Gordon said. “You are the coach of the coaches, you facilitate a culture in your department, in your school, and in your program. That is one which is consistent with the philosophies of educational athletics.”
Gordon oversees over 1,700 students each year at Novi Schools and his programs have collected a number of championships at the district, regional and state levels.
It’s been Gordon’s mission to put an emphasis on each and every athlete, no matter their skill level or sport.
“Every sport is equally important in its own right, and athletic directors need to show that you can’t be just a baseball person or a basketball person or football person. You don’t get to do that, as an athletic director,” he said. “Here in Novi, we’ve got 34 sports. So, there’s 34 sports that are very important to us.”
Vast background
A graduate of Clawson High School and Central Michigan University, Gordon had a passion for coaching as he came to the Royal Oak school district out of college.
He spent 22 years in Royal Oak schools as a teacher and administrator. During that time, he coached a variety of sports.
Gordon’s coaching resume includes middle school football, middle school basketball, freshman basketball, junior varsity golf, junior varsity football, junior varsity baseball and varsity baseball
His most noteworthy run was as varsity baseball coach of Royal Oak Kimball starting in 1995. That transitioned into being coach of Royal Oak High School until 2010. Gordon would be inducted into the Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2011.
It would be in 2010 that Gordon would get his first experience as an athletic director, taking over that role at Royal Oak High School.
“When I first stepped into teaching and coaching, my head was spinning. I was just learning and I got married and started a family. Eventually, I had some people point me in the direction of sports administration,” Gordon said. “I wanted to be a head coach and that was really my focus. When that happened, I got ultra-involved in the Coaches Association, and our program experienced a lot of success not just on the field, but in the classroom. Seeing the way that Chuck did (the AD job), it really did inspire me to kind of follow along in his footsteps.”
Creating memories, relationships
Gordon took over the athletic department at Novi in 2012.
Just two years ago, in 2019, Gordon was named an Allen W. Bush Award recipient by the MHSAA for unsung work in creating athletic opportunities.
Among those opportunities have come to the Novi athletes with special needs. Gordon and Novi have been one of the leading forces in the growth of Unified Athletics, creating athletic opportunities and competitions for those with special needs.
“I’m very proud of the unified sports movement that has been phenomenal here in Novi, and in the KLAA,” he said.
Along with sporting events, Gordon and the Novi football program have put on an annual football camp for kids with disabilities.
During a 2016 Novi football game, Gordon and then football coach Jeff Burnside worked with South Lyon East football coach Joe Pesci to create a moment for team manager Robby Heil. Heil, one of the most recognized faces in Novi athletics, has Down Syndrome. Novi and South Lyon East came together to allow Heil to take the field and score a 36-yard touchdown in front of a raucous Novi crowd.
“Watching (Heil) run for a touchdown, and being able to create a special event like that… talk about changing lives, those are the things that I will remember forever and that really defines what kind of culture is at Novi.”
Along with the time and effort Gordon has put into Novi, he has always been one of the first to extend his hand to hosting postseason events at Novi schools. Doing so has established a number of long-lasting relationships with administrators and MHSAA representatives around the state.
“I’m proud of all the relationships that I’ve built with the men and women who are athletic administrators and teachers everywhere. I’ve met so many amazing people,” he said. “I’m going to miss having those day-to-day conversations with folks and seeing them. That’s what it’s about. It’s always about the kids and the people. It’s not about winning and losing and championships and hanging banners, it’s about the relationships and memories that have been created.”
One of those relationships Gordon looks back fondly on is with former Royal Oak Tribune columnist and sports writer Jim Evans. Evans, 66, recently passed away after a long battle with cancer. Evans spent 43 years covering high school athletics and witnessed many memorable moments from Gordon’s coaching career.
“Jim is near and dear to my heart,” Gordon said. “I used to have to call in every baseball game when I was a Kimball. I called five newspapers, but I always left the last one for the Royal Oak Tribune because I knew there’s a good chance Jim would pick up and take the call. We would talk for a half hour, and we would only talk for about five minutes about Kimball baseball. The other 25 minutes, we were just talking about stuff. Jim, and other members of the media like him, provide a scrapbook for prep athletes and it’s something I will always appreciate and hold a great respect for.”
Retirement life
Gordon will wrap up his run at Novi in the coming months, ending his time with the school in one of the most unpredictable years of his career.
“These have been some of the most challenging times that we’ve ever experienced, but on the flip side of it, it has also been a very rewarding time,” Gordon said. “Watching kids compete and being able to help put their smiles back on their faces, watching them compete and get after it and be with their friends, and learn all these different lessons that athletics can teach kids, it’s just been awesome. It’s been a lot of work, make no mistake, we have rescheduled and scheduled and rescheduled and cancelled and postponed and adjusted and changed. But, it also has forced us athletic directors to communicate with each other, to lean on each other and to support each other. That’s what this COVID thing has done. And it makes us appreciate these times with kids.”
In retirement, Gordon will be able to spend more time with his wife Jill, along with his children Zach and McKenzie, as well as his son-in-law Mike.
Gordon knows it will be difficult to get too far away from athletics, so he may not be able to stay away forever.
“I don’t think anybody who has done what athletic directors, coaches, educators do will be able to prepare for being away from it,” he said. “It’s in our DNA. It’s what we think about when we get up in the morning. It’s what we think about before we go to bed. It’s what many people dream about. It’s not a job. It’s a lifestyle. To walk away from working 14 and 15 hour days to nothing, I don’t envision myself doing that. I’m looking for my new next adventure, I guess. I’m sure there might be something out there, but I don’t see myself sitting still for too long.”