Dunlap’s Gornik wins 2025 CSM Girls Tennis Coach of the Year

Dunlap is a well-established tennis powerhouse in Central Illinois and success on the court for the Eagles is seldom a surprise. 

But this past fall, Dunlap flew higher than ever before and laid claim to being the highest-finishing girls tennis team in the Peoria and Bloomington/Normal areas in the 54-year history of the IHSA State tournament. As a result, the Eagles’ head coach Patrick Gornik is Clutch Sports Media’s 2025 Girls Tennis Coach of the Year. 

Gornik’s Eagles placed second in Class 1A with 28 points, only behind Deerfield, which accumulated 36 points at the state championships. Dunlap won several tournaments as a team, including the Mid-Illini Conference Tournament and the Class 1A Dunlap Sectional. The Eagles are in the midst of their best stretch in team history, winning four straight sectional titles, plus state trophies in each of the last three years after taking third in 2023 and 2024. 

Gornik’s squad showed great starpower and depth all year, led by Class 1A state runner-up and CSM’s 2025 Girls Tennis Player of the Year Anna Yu. 

Five other Eagles earned CSM All-Area nods and made state appearances. Singles players Yu and Alassea Michel each won several matches at state, as did the doubles pairings of Isabella Gusso and Katherine Brewer, along with Melaina Humbles and Berkeley Stigall. Gusso and Brewer finished fifth in Class 1A doubles and all six of the aforementioned players were Mid-Illini all-conference selections. 

Gornik is also Dunlap’s boys tennis coach and has led that squad to eight straight sectional titles and a Class 1A state championship in 2016. 

Hear more from Gornik about this past season and his career in our interview with him below. Some responses have been minimally edited for clarity. 

Has it set in yet that you helped lead your team to a state runner-up trophy?

“Honestly, it hasn’t. I never go into a season expecting anything. I know, especially with Anna and the whole team that we had, we knew we were pretty stacked and it was just a matter of figuring out what pieces fit best and we did a little bit of tinkering early on. We have a coaching luxury that we have many great singles players so we knew kind of where we could end up. As we started through the season, we had a goal of what we wanted at state once we started to realize this is a possibility so I mean it still hasn't sunk in, I don't know if it ever will. To do it on the girls' side, it’s tough to have that many highly-talented players on a team, and having to stay a team, and feel [like] a team and everyone pulling in the same direction. So I don't know that I'll ever fully grasp it.”

What’s your coaching background?

“[Dunlap] is the only place that I've been, this is year 18 with the girls and 19 with the boys in the spring, yeah. I just consider myself so lucky to [because] I did my student teaching at Dunlap with the hopes that I would be able to get a job at Dunlap because it was where I really wanted to be. I was thinking I was going to be a basketball coach because I had only played a year of high school tennis and had not had a lesson."

“I've learned a lot, and I've had a lot of patient teams, and I've had a lot of great mentors that have helped me along the way, to make me see when I'm on the right path or maybe need some redirection. It's helped me to create or build a community where I like to think we are a tennis school so that's what I like to think of and hopefully other people realize it too."

“I don't want people to think that it's easy to win the trophies. We've had a lot of success, but it's, the people, you know? It's like what Kobe [Bryant] would always say, and it's always what you do outside of the spotlight [and] outside of all those things. There's so much more that goes into it. If you watch Anna [Yu] play, it looks easy but she has gone through a lot of work to get to that easy.”

What helps keep you going?

“It's a different challenge every time, and just figuring out how to get the best out of the people that we're working with and helping them to reach their goals. It sounds cliché, but honestly, that's the most satisfying part. I'm never really that comfortable with the spotlight, like I hit zero balls on the way to winning any of these points at state but [I was] just trying to figure out a way to get the group success and how to get the group to come together. These girls put so much time in off-season as well and getting them to figure out how to work in a high-pressure environment. It's an individual sport, and you play it as a team so working those relationships and trying to build that is really just the most exciting part for me, I think. Winning is exciting, obviously everyone likes to win but that comes secondary, and that's we don't put a whole lot of pressure on that, at Ieast I don't try to.”

What’s a piece of coaching advice that has either helped you or is one you’d give to another coach?

“I would say just to build up the team as much as possible. Anytime you're trying to chase wins, you're going to leave out a lot of possible greatness [and] wins on the court, but also just personal development. If all you're doing is worrying about the record or the score, you miss out on all the relationships so I think that was the biggest thing. I think it helped me coming from a non-tennis background, as I didn't have a huge ego about what I knew, because I knew I didn't, so just building that communication, building the trust, and try to listen more than you coach. Knowing when to [be quiet] and let it ride also helps too.”