‘Andrew will be successful’: As Sorrells leads LCU athletics, he draws on lessons he learned playing on Tech’s Final Four team

Andrew Sorrells at a recent Lubbock Christian University game at the Rip Griffin Center. Staff photo.

The second-grade championship game was played where the bigger kids went to school – a junior high near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

It’s one of the first basketball memories for Andrew Sorrells. His team – the Raiders – lost 2-0.

“It’s like a soccer score. I played soccer … and at that age, people were scoring goals left and right. So I’m thinking I kind of like soccer better because there’s more scoring,” Sorrells said.

Sorrells eventually settled on basketball in high school – good enough to end up on the 2019 Texas Tech Red Raiders team that almost won a national championship.

A few years later, 28-year-old Sorrells is one of – if not the – youngest director of athletics in the country, leading Lubbock Christian University’s 16 NCAA Division II teams.

“He’s just a hard worker. Obviously, he’s been around a high level of excellence, so he understands what it takes,” said Todd Duncan, LCU men’s basketball coach. “He’s willing to put in the work, there’s not a secret to anything. It’s just using your intelligence, work hard and figure it out.”

Getting the job

In 2023, Sorrells was working for the Red Raider Club, raising money for Texas Tech Athletics. He got a call from Lubbock businessman Casey Doyle, telling him LCU was looking for an athletic director. Doyle thought Sorrells could be a good fit to lead the Chaparrals.

Sorrells attended Bible studies at Doyle’s home when he was playing at Tech.

Sorrells knew he wanted to work in athletic administration, saying he prayed about the opportunity, discussing it with his inner circle. Then he sought the job and was hired to begin January of last year.

When the hire was announced, LCU President Scott McDowell said:

“We are extremely excited to have Andrew coming on board to lead LCU Athletics. He loves Lubbock, he has deep family ties here and he is well respected by the Lubbock community.”

“I have been incredibly impressed by his depth of character and his winsome ability to connect with people. His passion and energy are contagious,” said McDowell, adding he saw Sorrells as a role model for LCU’s student athletes.

Doing the job

Sorrells inherited a successful athletics department – the Lady Chaps women’s basketball team won NCAA Division II national titles in 2016, 2019 and 2021.

His dream? All 16 programs win national championships.

His job – giving LCU coaches the resources needed to have a competitive advantage over not only Lone Star Conference schools but also schools across the nation.

His goals:

• Continue success of every program.
• Continue raising money for those programs.
• Upgrade facilities.

Sorrells is wrapping up a campaign started before he was hired, two new gyms, a weight room and a new training facility before the beginning of next school year.

The men’s and women’s basketball teams and volleyball teams all share the same facility, an ongoing challenge for scheduling practice time.

“It’s like getting a restaurant reservation on Valentine’s Day. You should be able to practice anytime you want. Or in terms of individual development, Ethan Duncan, he’s a gym rat. He wants to be in there all the time. But he can only go in there when volleyball, women’s basketball is not practicing. We’re kind of doing his personal development a disservice by not having the right facilities,” he said.

Sorrells is already looking ahead to new facility goals.

There are discussions about a study hall for student-athletes. The baseball team’s turf is 16 years old and turf is usually good for about eight years.
Name, image and likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal have dramatically changed college sports in the past few years.

Not many LCU student-athletes have any NIL deals, Sorrells said, but the transfer portal has been a huge issue, especially for men’s basketball.

An AD’s day has lots of variety. One day he could be:

• Selecting tiles for a building project.
• Hiring a coach – he’s hired four so far and is currently searching for a new tennis coach. He’s also hired four trainers and a deputy AD.
• Counseling a student athlete.

“I have an open-door policy. I was in their shoes not long ago, trying to figure out what’s next after playing. I want to be a resource,” he said.

Being close in age to the student athletes also means most of his coaches are older, but Sorrells said it hasn’t been an issue.

“Nobody cares how old you are, just how good. They saw how I’m invested and the hours I’m putting in,” he said.

“When I look at my day and prioritizing different initiatives, it comes down to how are we enhancing the student-athlete experience in all areas? How can we make their lives better, easier?” he said.
Part of that experience is spiritual.

“I knew coming into LCU, the C does mean something here and everything we do is Christ-centered,” he said.

“I’m a strong believer, the coaches are believers in our culture and it’s contagious. When ranking my priorities, number one is my faith and it made this a much more attractive job,” Sorrells said.

Learning about the conference

Sorrells is also learning about the Lone Star Conference, with 17 schools in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

“My goal was anytime we were meeting – we have our conference meetings in Frisco – I wanted to sit down one-on-one with as many ADs as I could. They’ve been in the business longer, they know their way around and just to get as much wisdom as possible,” he said.

At his first conference meeting, Sorrells had breakfast with the UT Permian Basin AD one morning and the Angelo State AD another morning. He learned about the conference, but also about his fellow ADs, building relationships.

“If I have a problem, I can just pick up the phone, call them and ask them how they’d handle this,” he said.

Tech AD Kirby Hocutt: ‘Andrew will be successful’

Sorrells values another director of athletics – Tech’s Kirby Hocutt – as a mentor.

“I just try to be there as somebody he can talk to,” said Hocutt, whether it’s a phone call, text or lunch.

“I was excited for him. I was disappointed for us, because he was doing a great job here in the Red Raider Club,” Hocutt said.

“He was a part of a team and a program that I knew was teaching young men more than just basketball,” Hocutt said about the 2018-19 Red Raiders, pointing out lessons about dedication, commitment, pursuit to be the best and winning at the highest levels.

Part of what Hocutt saw Sorrells learn during that season was how to show appreciation and respect to people who helped the basketball program, a big part of what an AD does.

“Andrew has continued to build healthy, authentic relationships. That’s the key to success as an athletics director, or in any business. You want to build relationships. Andrew will be successful. He’s a talented leader,” Hocutt said.

From a family of lawyers, one of them his well-known grandpa

Sorrells is the son of a lawyer and a district attorney, but didn’t see that as his path.

“They make a good impact, but I just always loved being around sports. Everybody in my family played them and that’s what I was really passionate about,” Sorrells said.

Grandfather Kent Hance is also an attorney – but better known as chancellor emeritus of the Texas Tech University System.

Anticipating is the biggest piece of advice Hance has given his grandson.

“He always says it comes back to lack of anticipation, that you didn’t think enough about this situation, or you weren’t prepared enough. You didn’t anticipate this could occur,” Sorrells said.

Then there are the one-liners Hance has tossed Sorrells ever since he was a kid, drilling in lessons.

“He’ll say ‘trouble’ and I’ll say, ‘rides a fast horse,’” Sorrells said.

Others, such as:

• “A sleeping fox … catches no poultry.”
• “Bury the dead … move on.”

“He’s just got all these sayings he wants ingrained in his grandchildren’s minds,” Sorrells said.
Hance has embraced his grandson’s new employer.

He’s taught a longtime leadership class at Tech and now also teaches the same class down the street at LCU.

McDowell recently told Sorrells he loves how Hance now refers to LCU as “we” and “us” along with Tech.

High school hoops, deciding to go to Texas Tech

Sorrells played different sports year-round, but settled on hoops in high school, starting as a sophomore and averaging 18 points a game his senior year.

Tubby Smith, then Texas Tech’s head basketball coach, came to one of Sorrells’ games to recruit the other team’s point guard.

He had a bad game and Sorrells had a “really, really good game,” he said.

Smith offered Sorrells a preferred walk-on opportunity.

“I didn’t accept it immediately because I was kind of rebellious. Everybody in my family went to Tech – all of them. I wanted to go somewhere else,” he said.

He had other offers, but once he got on Tech’s campus he was sold, even if the program had recently struggled.

“Tech was not doing well the Big 12. You could get there ten minutes before tipoff and sit on the third row,” he said.

Smith had started to turn the program around, but after Sorrells’ first year, the coach left in 2016 to take the job at Memphis.

Sorrells wondered if he should stay or go. He called Chris Beard, who’d just been named the head coach at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Years earlier, Sorrells attended a Bob Knight basketball camp in Lubbock, when Knight was the Red Raiders’ head coach. Beard was on Knight’s staff and worked the camp.

In 2013, Sorrells attended Beard’s summer camp when he was head coach at Angelo State.

“I called him to see if I could be a walk-on at UNLV. He told me to hang tight,” Sorrells said, not knowing Beard was about to be named Tech’s head coach. He was at UNLV 19 days.

“Then Beard starts recruiting all these talented kids and it was just too good of an experience to want to go anywhere else,” he said.

Sorrells never got the playing time he hoped for, but liked his teammates and the culture Beard was building steering Tech to its first Elite Eight in 2018.

Just missing a national championship

Sorrells remembers his dad taking him to the 2008 national championship in San Antonio to see Kansas play Memphis. Kansas won and Sorrells saw a photo of a walk-on player on the front page of the newspaper with his name showing on his uniform.

Fast forward to 2019 inside U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Sorrells was sitting on the Texas Tech bench in the national championship game.

Norense Odiase made two free throws with 22 seconds left to give Tech a 68-65 lead.

“Of course, all the guys that aren’t playing are sitting there at the end of the bench and we’re thinking, we’re about to win this thing. We don’t want our celebration pictures in our warm-ups,” Sorrells said.

Off came the warm-ups.

Then Virginia’s DeAndre Hunter hit a three-point shot with 12 seconds left to tie the game.

Warm-ups back on.

Virginia won in overtime.

The team is still close – from having an active group chat to being in each other’s weddings. The experience was invaluable to Sorrells in terms of leadership and mindset, he said.

Life after basketball

After that season Sorrells considered transferring to an NCAA Division III school with a good MBA program where he could get playing time. But he needed a waiver from the NCAA for another year and it wasn’t granted.

Teammate Parker Hicks from the 2019 team transferred to LCU, became an All-American and was part of a Chaps team that made the deepest NCAA Tournament run in school history in 2021.

Hicks came to Tech after Sorrells, but quickly saw his people skills.

When they walked into a room together, Hicks said, Sorrells either knew someone, or had met someone new before leaving.

“Anytime I was going with him, I knew I was going to get a story or meet somebody new,” Hicks said.

Sorrells returned to the Metroplex and started working on his MBA at UT Dallas.

But he was drawn back to Lubbock by a few things:

• His girlfriend Kelsee grew up in Shallowater and was still in Lubbock.
• His brother was a student at Tech and had an extra bedroom Sorrells could use.
• He could finish his MBA online, an unexpected benefit of the COVID pandemic.

He got his degree, married Kelsee and started his career before landing at LCU.

Please click here to support Lubbock Lights.

Comment, react or share on our Facebook post.

Author: Fernando Cruzis a spring semester intern for Lubbock Lights from Texas Tech's College of Media and Communications.