Warrick Bourke is originally from Johannesburg, South Africa. Bourke came to Gannon in the Spring of 2014 on an athletic scholarship to play for Gannon’s Men’s soccer team and study Sports Management and Marketing.
In his four years, Bourke was fortunate enough to play under Head Coach and Gannon’s Hall of Fame Rob Van Rheenen for one season before he stepped down. He then played his remaining three years under head coach Dale White. In his final 2 years at Gannon head coach Dale White led them to two PSAC tournaments unfortunately coming up short in both those years.
In Bourke’s freshman year he met his now wife Jessica, who was a Physician Assistant Student at the time. She currently is a Physician Assistant at UPMC Orthopedic Sports Medicine of Erie as well as an Adjunct Professor for Gannon’s Physician Assistant program. They have two beautiful children, their daughter Liliana who will be 3 in January and son Lincoln who will be 1 this December. Bourke says, “family is the most important thing to me and with a full-time job, two little ones and two dogs (Kaiya and Stormi) we just enjoy most of our time together at home.”
Gannon as well as Erie played a huge role in Bourke’s life. Gannon provided him with a platform to play the sport he loved most whilst being able to study and develop the skills and knowledge to be able to be a successful individual outside of college. It also allowed him to form lifelong relationships with people from all over the world.
Bourke loved Gannon’s Sports Management and Marketing program more specifically the professors, Dr. Brownlee, Dr. Yoo, Professor Kurt Hersch were among the few that provided him with key life lessons in becoming a great business-minded individual. In his final semester at Gannon, he was tasked with a group of students to start a pop-up business for a final business project. In this project they started a business called “Indigenous Erie '' led by my fellow classmate James Spaeder. The business was built around featuring Local Erie Business and Erie Apparel happened to be one of those businesses they decided to work with. Little did he know that this brief introduction to the company would lead to a career in the coming year.
Bourke graduated in December of 2017 and moved to Pittsburgh for a couple months while his wife completed her final year at Gannon. In completing her final year of Clinical rotations his wife was offered a job in Erie, and the decision was made that they would continue their life there. November of 2018, Bourke walked through the doors of Erie Apparel to sit down with the Owner of the Company Greg Straub for an interview, and he would later be hired as a store associate. 5 years later, he has worked his way up to becoming Erie Apparel’s operations manager. It’s Bourke’s job now to manage the retail staff and the incomings and outgoings from the warehouse.
Bourke says, “During those five years, Gannon University was always an establishment we wanted to work/partner with. So, to finally be able to help launch the official collaboration with Gannon is something special to me. Also, I take enormous pride in hiring Gannon students to work at our two retail locations. I am excited to see where this next chapter of my life takes me.”