We have all been there. We may have not known it at the time, but there was an event that more than any other shaped our lives. For the doctor, it may have been something as simple as seeing Marcus Welby on TV. For the Major League pitcher, it may have been that first trip to Shea Stadium and seeing Tom Seaver fashion another shutout. For the abuse counselor, it might have been a front row seat to violence in the home. It can be a one-time experience or something that happens over the course of time. It can be a good experience or a bad experience, but it is always something that we can remember like it happened yesterday.

Andrew Gaydosh was put on this earth with a bagful of gifts. Always a good student, he was blessed with movie star looks and abilities on the basketball court that few possess. He was raised in a loving family that put the well-being of the family above all else. Yet it was an experience that he witnessed one weekend during his sophomore year at UD that quite possibly made him what he is today.

Jack Gaydosh had worked hard all of his life. He had been with the same company for 25 years and had worked his way up to the level of Director of Human Resources. However, it was the nineties and the thing to do in the nineties was for big companies to buy out smaller companies and begin to make cuts. Jack became one of those cuts. Few of us work for the same company for 25 years, but the feeling that one gets when told to leave after that much time is similar to finding your wife in bed with another man. Jack was devastated and Andrew saw the look in his father’s eyes. He made a promise to himself at that moment that it would never happen to him.

Andrew was not born with a basketball in his hands. He wasn’t even that much in love with the sport when his mother told him as a young man that it was something that could take him a long way in his life. Unlike the youth of his time, Andrew was not one to question the wisdom of his parents. Like he has done with everything in his life, he put his mind to becoming an outstanding basketball player. Through a good deal of work and the ability to use the skills he was given, Gaydosh began to get a good deal of notice locally during his sophomore and junior seasons. He had performed well at the state championships during his sophomore year and his name was being mentioned by the Bobby Knights of the world. Between his junior and senior seasons, the rest of the nation began to take notice.

Attending the well-known Five Star camp in Pittsburgh, Andrew picked the right time to showcase his abilities on both ends of the court. Going up against high school All-American at every turn, he was the one turning heads. At the end of the camp, Gaydosh was placed on the list of top 10 participants. It was then that the big names started showing up.

During his senior year, the Richmond team took off at the beginning of the season and was one of the top teams in the state. Gaydosh then sustained an injury to his ankle and he missed 7 games. The team immediately went into a funk. Upon his return, they again began to win, which only improved his standing in the recruiting community. After averaging 18 points and 10+ rebounds that season, he narrowed his list down to Indiana, Northwestern, Wake Forrest and Dayton. UD had just returned to the NCAA under Jim O’Brien and the future looked promising to the young Andrew.

Just about all Division I players enter college with the long-range view of the NBA in mind. The only ones that don’t are the ones that look at college as the minor leagues and only attend until the next NBA draft. Gaydosh was not a great deal removed from the former in that he realized that the NBA was a possibility, but not a probability.

“Everybody wants to be in the NBA, but I realized even when I got to Dayton that my chances were pretty slim,” Gaydosh said. “Everybody peaks at a certain level and I did it my senior year in high school. I realized that I needed some maturing as a ball player when I got there and I just never found my nitch.”

The first two years of Gaydosh’s career gave little indication of what was to follow. The Flyers were just coming off the 1990 trip to the NCAA and had successfully recruited the highly-sought after Chip Jones, a JUCO product from Texas who played his high school ball in Cincinnati. The excitement was back and we all believed that the level of talent being brought into the program was going to continue to take us back. After a 15-15 season, the bottom began to fall out when Jones became academically ineligible just hours before a contest at Vanderbilt. A very up and down season followed and concerns began to surface. Even someone as positive as Andrew began to have second thoughts.

“I thought about transferring after my sophomore year, but decided against it. The real reason that I didn’t transfer was because of my love of UD, the fans, and the entire atmosphere. I felt it was best to stay and try to help out as much as I could.”

The 1992-1993 season could have buried the program. A 4 and 26 season can bring down the best of programs. We the fans suffered through every loss, yet one has to wonder what it was like on the court. Surprisingly enough, there may have been some good that came out of it.

“That year was such a blur,” he said. “When you look at that one season, it really was a small part of the entire experience. There developed a core group of individuals on the team that became very close because of what we were going through. I don’t think that O’Brien ever really gave up, but he began to look out for himself more than those around him. It was his job and his career. It was different for us; it was just a small part of our collegiate years.”

The losses continued to mount and the amount of recovery time after every game and practice grew right along with those losses.

Basketball, for Gaydosh, had lost a great deal of its adrenalin rush, it wasn’t even fun anymore. “My knees were so bad that I would have to pick certain routes around campus just to minimize some of the discomfort. I was so gung-ho about getting started with my [business] career that I didn’t feel that bad about it ending. I do miss being around the guys, but I don’t miss the competition because of my competitive career. I miss the summer workouts, the conditioning, all of the work that actually got you there.”

With his basketball life nearly behind him, Andrew began to take a more narrowed focus on his future. He had a jump on most college students because of the career crisis that his father had to face just a short time before. “My mother had always toyed around with the idea of getting into real estate,” he said. “She had been very successful with Mary Kay with over 150 women working for her. After my sophomore year at UD, she said she was willing to pay for real estate school and I thought, ‘Why not?’ I got my license and that summer I realized that was what I wanted to do.” He was in the perfect position to “test drive” a career without a great deal of down side that many would have.

“People from all walks of life — doctors, teachers, engineers — were all getting their licenses and the thing that they told me was that they all wished that they had done it years ago. Being only 20, it was perfect for me because I did not have all of the financial responsibilities that most have.”

Working during the summers and whenever he could, Andrew began to make the kinds of contacts that were necessary to be successful in the real estate business. One of the advantages that a player at the University of Dayton has is the ability to meet a number of influential people in the community. Some take advantage of the situation while others do not. Gaydosh used it as his own personal business school. He not only improved his ability to communicate to people from all walks of life, but he also used it to show that he was more than just a basketball player with great hair.

As a result, when graduation came, Gaydosh was a wanted man. “Let’s face it,” he said, “when you are part of the UD fraternity, people take care of you. I had a number of great job offers and opportunities. But I didn’t want to have a situation where job security would be a problem as I saw with my father.” With that in mind, he began to sell real estate full time near his home in Indiana.

What followed was not exactly what he had envisioned, however. After working with a small independent real estate firm for about eight months, Andrew and his mother left that firm and purchased a Re/Max franchise. This experience immediately brought back memories of the 4-26 season. “Things were bad, the other brokers in town were really gunning for us. Every other day we questioned ourselves about the probability of the firm lasting another week. We really had to concentrate on our personal sales production due to the lack of other agents with us”

With continued hard work, things began to take off. Remax Integrity Group was becoming a company that the competition had to keep their eye on. Through a lot of hard work and knocking on every door he could find, Andrew sold over $1,000,000 in homes that first year. Soon, other agents began to join the firm. The years of adversity on the basketball court were beginning to have a positive effect.

“I’m in a very competitive business now and I feel that basketball really helped me out a lot to be able to handle the ups and downs,” Gaydosh said. “A 4 and 26 season will do that to you.”

Today, Andrew is the number one agent in the area. He sold over $9,000,000 of real estate last year while the firm as a whole topped $30,000,000. Commercial real estate and another office in the area are what Andrew and his mother are discussing now, but that is not all that makes him tick. Gaydosh is part of a large group of individuals that are putting together a plan to help further the education of all graduates of Richmond High School. When completed, a scholarship fund will be created that will allow all graduates to attend college without having to worry about mortgaging their future with tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. There is still a great deal of work to be done to complete this wonderful project, but with the hard work of Andrew Gaydosh and others like him, how could it ever fail?

The University of Dayton can be proud of its rich basketball tradition, but they can be even more proud of what their players do with their lives after they leave the hardwood.