Due North
After her playing career came to a somewhat sudden end, Gabrielle Ortiz ’14 is following a new dream, relying on the same traits and characteristics that have long defined her.
This is not a basketball story.
That probably sounds odd since you are here to read about Gabrielle Ortiz ’14, undeniably one of the most dedicated and decorated hoopers to ever come out of Wisconsin.
Sure, we’ll allude to her hardwood accomplishments – at Prairie, and at the University of Oklahoma, and on Team USA, and playing in the top leagues in Spain and Poland – but this, it must be noted, is not a story about her ability to drill three pointers (which she did with dazzling aplomb, 239 times at Prairie, a school record; and 215 times at OU, fourth most in program history) or her Tim Hardaway-like handle (which was always tight, ‘on a string’ as the kids like to say, described by longtime Whitefish Bay Dominican coach Kevin Schramka as such, “I can’t imagine anyone being a better ballhandler than Gabbi. She was as good with her left hand as she was with her right and her misdirection dribble was the best I’ve ever seen.”).
Schramka made that statement in March of 2014, just days after Ortiz was named Racine County Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year for the second straight year, and days after his team handed Ortiz and her teammates one of the most difficult losses in program history.
His words are still apropos now. Not so much because of the dribbling assessment (which is likely still true), but because of the door it cracks open for our story – the notion of misdirection.
Today, some 12 years after she last suited up for Prairie, misdirection feels like a proper entry point into appreciating the journey of Gabrielle Ortiz. And yes, that journey was – and still is – emphatically influenced by the game of basketball. These days, much of her free time is spent dishing information to the next generation of hoopers – she started the GO Basketball Academy in Oklahoma and offers private lessons and small group training for young players.
But, this is not a basketball story.
This is a story about encountering the unforeseen and recalibration, a story about creating angles and charting paths.
Admittedly, this is also a leadership story, and a good teammate story, and a story about following the GPS of your heart and going full steam in pursuit of a dream.
But this is not really a basketball story.
12 years later, it’s impossible to adequately articulate the emotion that filled the Horlick High School Fieldhouse on March 12th, 2014 as the Prairie girls’ basketball team, undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the state, was shocked by Whitefish Bay Dominican 35-34 in a Sectional Semifinal.
It was stunning. Following a loss at the WIAA State Tournament the year before, the Hawks were not supposed to go out like this in Ortiz’s final season. 
The Prairie Hawks with Gabrielle Ortiz were a cinematic story from the start, a classic underdog thriller during which Prairie went from 11-13 to 18-7 to 24-3 to an undefeated and state champion-favorite during her four years on varsity, everything crescendoing towards a denouement that would go down in school history. 2013-14 should have ended with a gold ball and a ladder and players clipping little pieces of net they would keep as mementos for the rest of their lives.
But life is not a movie.
There’s a Racine Journal Times picture from that night, clicked just moments after the final horn, where the faces of Prairie’s players are pained with shock. In the background, two players cling to each other, tears in their eyes, gripping each other’s shoulders, fingers digging into flesh, because when life serves up the sudden and the shocking, our best hope at staying afloat is holding on tight to the trusted and familiar.
In the forefront of this picture, middle of the frame, stands Ortiz. Soon she will be named Racine County Player of the Year. Again. Soon she will be named Miss Basketball in the state of Wisconsin. Soon she will leave Racine to become a star at Oklahoma. Soon she will play for her country. But in this moment, her eyes closed and her face tipped toward the heavens, the agony is raw. Visceral.
“It’s very painful,” Ortiz said after that game. “It’s sticking us in the heart. But I can’t thank my team and our coaches enough. We weren’t looking to go down like this, but I’m just proud of how our team fought.”
How’s that for perspective from a teenager who just had her heart broken? A teenager who, for four years, dominated for Prairie, willingly shouldering the weight of expectation?
You’ve heard the argument. Some people believe leaders are born. Others think they are formed. But, what happens when it is both innate and practiced? What kind of resolve and determination and self-awareness and commitment can blossom in a leader such as that?
It took Sherri Coale just a couple of hours. Despite being contacted out of the blue, despite being under no obligation to reply to me at all, the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inductee and winningest women’s basketball coach in University of Oklahoma history was quick with a story, eager to offer her thoughts when asked to describe Gabrielle Ortiz as a person.
But first, let’s rewind. To best appreciate Sherri Coale’s Gabrielle Ortiz story, greater context is helpful.
The first time Ortiz dealt with the maddening and unfair misdirection this life so often hands out she was too young to even remember. Her mother, Lorie, died from a heart attack when she was seven-months-old leaving her father, Shawn, as a single parent with two young kids and one path forward – to be there in every way possible, to become both mother and father, to support his children, always and adamantly, as they carved out their dreams.
“He’s a best friend to me,” Ortiz said in a story for SoonerSports.com while a student-athlete at Oklahoma. “He’s coached me my whole life, whether it be basketball or soccer or baseball, every sport that I played, he coached me. He always pushes me to do my best, and he’s always there for me to talk to him. He’s just a great man, and he’s my number one supporter.”
That kind of support does a lot for a child. For Ortiz, it helped her go from AAU standout to one of the best high school players in the country to an OU great to a professional basketball player. But, more than that, it was a living lesson in showing up and being present – in leadership – tangible proof that the taut, unbreakable bonds that form when giving your heart to someone you love will often last forever.
This brings us back to Sherri Coale’s story.
At the end of his life, Coale’s father was sick and in memory care, a trying, tumultuous, emotionally-taxing time for any child, no matter what age. One day, knowing this, sensing the emotional weight her coach was carrying, Ortiz asked if she could go with Coale to see him.
“She went with me on my trek to Walmart for weekly essentials,” recalls Coale. “I remember her helping me pick out a new pair of slippers to go with the shaving cream and the shampoo. Then we went to the assisted living center and hung out with my dad. He couldn’t communicate at this point, but he smiled and laughed at her as we talked and told him stories. She hugged him hard when we left. That’s Gabbi. It was an honor to coach her. It is a privilege to have her in my life.”
Anyone who watched her ascension in the game of basketball will tell you Gabrielle Ortiz was always a player wise beyond her years. The same can be said for Ortiz the person. A person who understands a thing or two about the importance of support. A person who accompanied her coach during a difficult time just because.
Granted, Gabrielle Ortiz doesn’t go with Sherri Coale to an Oklahoma Walmart without the game of basketball.
But this is not a basketball story.
The game was always Ortiz’s North Star. Her solar system. Her galaxy.
A fitting metaphor, I think, since basketball has taken her all over the world, including Russia when she competed for America on the U19 National Team in the 2015 FIBA Women’s World Championship. Just a few years after that loss in the Horlick High School gymnasium on Rapids Drive in Racine, Ortiz found herself in the Sports Palace Olympiskyi in Chekhov, Russia, joyously huddled alongside her teammates – including A’ja Wilson, last season’s WNBA MVP, and Napheesa Collier, the MVP runner-up – a glittering, space-age trophy in their hands, gold medals dangling from their necks.
The head coach of that team was Dawn Staley, one of the most influential figures in the history of women’s basketball.
“Gabbi is the consummate point guard and that’s a lost art,” Staley told the Racine Journal Times following the tournament. “We were away from our families and current teams for about a month. A lot of times it can get monotonous. But Gabbi was always there with a smile on her face and making people laugh. She’s just a joy to be around.”
Ortiz and basketball. It was always a give and give relationship. And it was never about program records or points per game. She poured in effort and commitment, and the game gave back competition and challenge, camaraderie and relationships.
The same things Ortiz’s coaches and teammates appreciated about her were the same things that fed her love of the game.
“She was a fan favorite at Oklahoma,” says Coale. “People loved her because of how she played – how she handled the ball, how she shot it, how hard she competed. But, they attached themselves to her because of who she is and how she made them feel. Gab always had time for anybody. She called fans by their first names. She invested in the families of her teammates, coaches, and staff. People were drawn to her because of the heart she displayed on the court, but they were impacted because of how she treated them.”
After starring at OU, a career that saw her win the Big 12 Freshman of the Year Award, make three Academic All-Big 12 First Teams, and become the 35th player in program history to reach 1,000 career points – Ortiz’s basketball dream, and her world travels, continued.
Following a preseason spent with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks in 2018, she signed with CDB Clarinos and helped the team win the Spanish LF2 League which earned CDB a promotion to the top league in Spain. There, she lived on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
Next, came a season with the University of Gdansk Club in Poland. There, she lived in Gdansk.
Next, came a return to Spain where she played for Blue Sedis Cadi La Seu, also competing in the country’s top league. That season, she lived in Seu D’urgell.
All of this was equal parts whirlwind and adventure and dream come true. For so long basketball and Gabrielle Ortiz had been good to each other. Which is probably why she never expected it would leave her crying on a street corner in Spain.
How’s that for misdirection?
You might wonder what a group of Oklahoma City firefighters, sitting around a table discussing a colleague has to do with basketball.
Nothing, really. And yet, everything.
After two decades of chaos and triumph and euphoria and heartbreak and sweat, the game of basketball, Ortiz realized, was no longer giving back the things she was giving it. She was not getting the playing time she deserved, nor the satisfaction the sport had for so long provided. This is what she realized that day on the streets of Spain.
“I thought I would be playing a lot longer,” Ortiz told the Racine Journal Times in November. “But the simple answer is, emotionally, I was not being fulfilled. The European lifestyle got to be pretty heavy on me mentally. Physically I could have kept getting top-league contracts. To this day, probably the hardest decision I have made was to decide to hang it up and start a new life away from basketball.”
Of course. Because what if she never found something that filled her with the same kind of joy, that provided the same rush of adrenaline? Without basketball, how would she give back to the communities she cherished?
How about working with a team to save lives and make a city safer?
In 2023, Ortiz started her training for the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Of the 29 graduates who made it through, she was one of only three women. 19 weeks of fighting fires and pulling ladders and climbing stairs in the sweltering Oklahoma heat. It was the hardest thing she’s ever done in her life.
“Being a firefighter is no joke,” she told the Journal Times. “It takes a special person. I think that was a big draw for me.”
A special person. The kind who learned selflessness and support from her father following a family tragedy. The kind who sits beside a coach during a moment of vulnerability. The kind who quickly becomes a team leader whether suiting up for The Prairie School or the United States of America or Station 14.
In May, seeking a quote about Gabrielle Ortiz the firefighter, I sent an inquiry to the Oklahoma City Fire Department’s Public Information Officer. That request made it to Station 14’s Captain. From there, it became a group project.
This is the quote that was shared by Major Jonathan Johnson:
“Gabbi is the kind of person every community hopes for and every team depends on — humble in service, relentless in work ethic, and steady when people need her most. Whether she’s serving others as a firefighter, supporting her teammates, or simply showing up for people without being asked, she leads with character long before she leads with words. Hall of Fames recognize achievement, but Gabbi’s true legacy is the impact she leaves on the people around her every single day.”
In his note, Major Johnson had only one request. “We worked on this as a group and we’re hoping to submit it as Station 14,” he said.
Now that’s a team. And at the center of it all, working tirelessly to ensure everything runs smoothly no matter what difficulties or misdirection Station 14 might face, is Gabrielle Ortiz.